It's IWD season! But what do women REALLY want?

Do leaders, organisations, policy makers ask women what they want?

Notice that I ask this question assuming that perhaps leaders, organisations and policy makers are?not?women. Well sometimes they are, but often they are not.

It's been barely 100 years since women got the vote (1971 in Switzerland - that fact always astounds me). So perhaps we are kind of used to having men decide things for us.

Where shall we go for dinner honey?

I don't know, where do?you?want to go?

I used to do that myself because after a hard day at work, lawyering, consumed by work and high pressure decisions, I really?had no mental space?to decide about?dinner. See how I reframed that stereotype?

Women are still excluded, even in decisions about themselves. Just think about abortion laws in the US. I will also use?any excuse to throw in Hamilton song lyrics.

My God, In God We Trust

But we never really know what got discussed

Click boom! Then it happened

But no?one else was in the room where it happened?

The Room Where it Happens, lyrics by Lin-Manuel Miranda and performed by?Leslie Odum Jr as Aaron Burr

No, not showing an Aaron Burr photo. I mean if he was complaining about not being in the room with Washington etc, well, there were no women either...

I am always fascinated when companies and organisations talk about gender diversity. About 20 years ago, as a young enthusiastic working woman, I started going for the International Women's Day events in Malaysia. At the time, it was officiated by the then minister for women's affairs, Sharizat Jalil. Sharizat incidentally had been my first "master". In law we use the term "master" and "pupil" for when new lawyers do their pupilage or chamber in law firms. For Malaysia, we chamber for 9 months before getting called to the Bar.

Women representation in Malaysia

At the time, women's participation in the workforce in Malaysia was low, even by Asian standards. As for boards, there was about 12% women representation on boards of Malaysian companies. The target, like many other countries... was 30%. Hence, the 30% Clubs you see around the world. Today, I believe Malaysian boards have about 26% women representation.

30%? I asked myself? We're half of the population, yet we are only asking for 30%? Countries like Norway were braver - they set 40%. As I was in the oil and gas industry, I was well aware of how gender friendly oil rigs on the Norwegian side of the North Sea were. I did my best to make sure the companies I worked for were more inclusive towards women working offshore too, from my little corner of the world.

Because, at least in my industry, if women didn't get the chance to work on rigs and platforms, it would be harder for them to scale the career ladder and sit in those senior positions.

In the past 20 years, it's amazing to see how far Malaysia has come, in some sectors. Women are significantly represented in government - in the civil service. We had a woman Central Bank Governor, Zeti Aziz who was admired around the world as she steered Malaysia through the 1998 economic crisis that hit Asia.

Today, the chief justice is a woman, Tengku Maimun Tuan Mat who heads a woman majority Federal Court. She made the headlines when the Federal Court upheld the decision to put former prime minister, Najib Razak behind bars for 12 years for corruption related offences.

Malaysian law firms outdo international law firms when it comes to partnership, including managing partners. When I judged the UN WEP Malaysian entries, it was interesting to note that for multinationals, their Malaysian branches exceeded the gender targets and would be held up as models.

I mention Malaysia for a reason. I'd like women in the West to look outside the West and consider, what their Global South sisters have achieved and whether there is anything they can learn and emulate.

But first, a poll....

I posted this poll on LinkedIn last week. Over half of the women who responded wanted flexible working to meet their needs. Women, as well as men, have many needs, but let's face it... the number one need is the ability to balance work and family.

How do women do it?

A reason why Malaysian women are able to rise in the careers - and that included me - is that we have a strong support system. For many working parents, their retired parents are more than happy to look after the children. After school, the children stay at gran's house till their parents pick them up in the evening. Sometimes the extended family live in one house, or nearby. The family unit is strong.

Domestic help is common and that's how I survived. I had a live-in domestic helper. There was absolutely no way, that I, as a single parent, could have been legal counsel, eventually a general counsel without that support.

Unfortunately, domestic workers in Malaysia, Singapore and other wealthy Asian nations work under exploitative conditions. Us middle class women in South East Asia are a privileged lot. We succeeded on the backs of less fortunate women from countries who were not as economically developed. Our Western sisters do not have the same privilege and it's about time we reflected on this.

Also, women further down the social economic strata in Malaysia and Singapore, do not have the same support and without flexible and understanding employers, struggle more at work.

For Malaysia at least, we need to move past the "how many women leaders do we have" mentality, and look at the structures and ask - does this work for ALL women?

This was the speech I gave at the UN WEP Malaysia awards ceremony in 2021.

Moving to the UK, I discovered how privileged I had been compared to my British sisters. While yes, the UK has much longer maternity leave (6 months on full pay and a further 6 months on reduced pay), the problems start when women go back to work...

PregnantThenScrewed's tweets are available here: Thread.

Read that again:

84% of the 1.75 million people who have given up work to care for their family are women.

If women's needs aren't even accommodated at work, how are they to even think about holding leadership positions? Does that mean leadership is reserved for the wealthy and privileged women - who can afford child care and have strong support systems?

Think about how many women we are excluding from public life? I am not even talking about the US where increasingly conservative laws around women's bodily autonomy seems designed to keep women out of public life and within private homes (ok, I just did).

I may have waxed lyrical about Malaysia, but this from the Malaysian Employer's Federation last week...

This headline is from The Malay Mail and has been widely criticised. MEF is the Malaysian Employers Federation and shows the mentality of employers focused on "output" of employees over their wellbeing. Unlike the UK where more employers are allowing hybrid working post covid, most Malaysian employers have required people to physically be in offices from 9 to 5, five days a week.

This hits women hardest, and especially working mothers.

The mentality is "if you don't like it here, leave". We need to question the system and structures that force all people to work within rigid processes without considering their humanity, needs and lifestyles.

Young people don't want babies

Let's look at South Korea which still struggles with a patriarchal culture (well actually, all countries do. Big shout out to the Minangs in Indonesia which has a matriarchal culture!). Last month, South Korea's 2022 fertility figures dropped to 0.78. The rate to sustain a population is 2.1.

According to this CNN report:

Experts say the reasons for these demographic shifts across the region include demanding work cultures, stagnating wages, rising costs of living, changing attitudes toward marriage and gender equality, and rising disillusionment among younger generations.

Women, in fact all young people, now have to make a choice: career or family. Even Jacinda Arden got labeled with "women can't have it all".

So are we acknowledging that men CAN have it all?

Men too want flexibility, men too want to spend more time raising their kids. Quite a few men already are primary child carers - whether their co-parents are also men, or women. I wonder if I had a similar poll for men (ok, maybe the options would be a little different), would men also tick the "flexible to meet their needs" box?

Why are we not hearing as much from men when it comes to flexible working? After all it will benefit them too.

I remember there was a post on LinkedIn last year about maternity leave in the US (which doesn't mandate maternity leave). Some chap who clearly was in the men equal rights group, said, oh I bet you all don't want men to have paternity leave. The response? All the women said, we WANT men to have paternity leave and we will fight for you to have it! That wasn't the flex he thought he had.

I do feel men have abrogated this as a women's issue, when in reality it's a human issue.

What do I want?

What I want is for men to stand alongside women and advocate for what women really want AFTER they have listened to and consulted with women.

What I want is for leaders and organisations to invite and truly listen to what their women employees want. Not once a year through climate surveys or International Women's Day sessions. That dialogue happens every day. It is in every meeting, every interaction.

It begins with men giving back the space they have taken up, listening without talking over. It means listening without dismissing or invalidating what the woman says. It means learning about your own biases. No, biases are not your fault - these are accumulated over years since school, our families, society. We all have them. When we realise our bias, we consider how that influences our decision making.

It begins with men taking a real interest in what women say and think - without the urge to debate it, getting defensive, or worse - make a move on us. Be open to shifting your perspective when you see things from our eyes.

What do I REALLY want?

Women holding 50% of power in the world in partnership with men. Today the world is so imbalanced through male dominance. It's time to bring about a more balanced and fairer world.