According to Thai tradition, women are the hind legs of the elephant. The front legs provide leadership and direction, but strength and stability are at the hind legs. The elephant cannot move forward without support of both front and hind legs working in harmonious combination.
Fortunately the Asian workforce has support from both the menfolk and the women, but not in equal proportions. According to a recent International Labour Organisation (ILO) survey ("Transformation of Women at Work in Asia") participation of women in the overall labour force in Asia, although the highest in the developing world, is not moving forward as much as it should, and in some areas, is actually reducing.
If the ILO statistics are accurate, participation of women in the East Asian workforce amounted to 61.8% of adult women of working age in 2015, a fall-off from 69.1% 20 years ago in 1995. Comparative figures for Southeast Asia were 58.8% in 2015 as compared with 58.5% in 1995, a very marginal increase.
These participation rates are a lot higher than in South Asia, where the 2015 participation rates fell from 34.8% in 1995 to only 28.3% in 2015. Total populations in all these regions have risen in the meantime, so that there are more women at work. But the fall-off in participation rates, or lack of meaningful progress, in the case of Southeast Asia, is interpreted as a step in the wrong direction.
The ILO recently estimated that if the gender gap in workforce participation could be closed, the world economy could benefit to the extent of US$5.8 trillion, and the Asia Pacific by US$3.2 trillion by 2025.
Is the elephant getting weaker? Or lazier? Or just more reliant on the front legs to move forward?
How can the falling trend be reversed?
In theory, and in several countries also in practice, the opportunities and attractions for women's employment are increasing. Meanwhile the deterrents to such participation are also reducing. Especially in urban areas, women have greater access to education. Education opportunities need, however, to extend up to and beyond the secondary school level, if these opportunities can lead to better employment participation rates. In many countries, women's education stops at the point where such education can really make a difference in terms of securing employment. Smaller families, often with a first child later in life, when the basis of a life career has already been created, are also a key to promoting women's employment.
However there is also a contrary trend, in the form of difficulty of access to affordable child-care. Extended families are giving way to separated family units, depriving children of the possibilities of grandparental child-care. This trend forces women to take extended mid-career retirement from work.
Already in the more developed Asian countries, institutional child-care facilities are more readily available. But many parents have misgivings about using such facilities. There is no substitute for mother's personal care, and, indeed, for mother's milk, whatever the infant formula industry may claim to the contrary.
However some insightful companies, especially in Singapore and Malaysia, are beginning to offer maternity leave, even with partial salaries for a period, and right of return to work once child-care responsibilities are alleviated. However the cost of raising a family is rising as never before. It is challenging to raise a family, even of one or two children, on a single pay-packet.
Inspiration from an Ivory Tower
The recommendations of the ILO to resolve these problems are theoretically sound. But the ILO lives in ivory towers, and seldom comes down to the practicalities of living at ground level alongside those whose interests they are intended to serve.
The first ILO solution is to urge governments and industries to create good employment accessible to women. That certainly did happen in the garment industry. But that is a fickle, highly mobile industry, prone to up-rooting and migration to other countries or continents. It thrives on low pay and adverse working conditions, and is ultimately susceptible to workforce replacement by automation. As wages rise, some sectors tend to take on more male workers, crowding out the women. The electronics industry is a natural follower of garments, but here automation and labour-reducing design and rationalisation of production technology can reduce some jobs altogether, before women even get a chance to participate in employment growth.
A second solution of the ILO is access to education and skills development. In this context, Asia is rather polarised: in South Asia, women are certainly deprived of education, but in Southeast and East Asia, they often represent the majority presence in education. The sure thing is to enable women to remain in the education pyramid to higher levels. But this requires investment, and the boys tend to gain preference when family budgets are limited.
A third ILO solution is to reduce the time burdens for women in caring for family, whether young children or elderly parents. This is easy to say, but hard to achieve. If governments fail to provide child-care, individual families cannot afford to take such financial responsibility.
A final ILO solution comes in the form of stronger legal and social rights. Writing the laws certainly costs little, but takes long, and enforcing such laws is another matter. Social conventions take even longer to reform. In some countries, past progress even seems to have gone into reverse, a particularly worrying trend.
Is Thailand a guiding light?
It is often suggested that Thailand is one of the most favoured nations in terms of women's education, rights and work participation.
Such reliable statistics as are available tend to confirm this impression. Women's participation in the education pyramid is very favourable. Women are diligent and achieve better education performance than their male counterparts. There is little or no discrimination in job access. Generally salaries appear to be commensurate with performance rather than discriminatory according to gender.
However, despite favourable indications of women's presence in business management, line-ups of company directors tend to reveal no more than one or two token women directors. Senior management, local or foreign, displays much the same phenomenon. Women in leadership are always praised, but often as exceptions to the general rule in an unfavourable gender balance.
However, Thailand has already peaked in population growth and will shortly enter into numerical decline. There will be heavy demand for new entrants into scientific, technical, engineering and mathematical-related occupations throughout the industrial hierarchy. The new "Thailand 4.0" slogan, with its target "Eastern Economic Corridor", will create massive increases in skilled labour demand. Where are all these workers going to come from? There is really no choice but to make gender equality into reality. So might the old tradition finally be reversed and women become the front legs of the elephant?
Christopher F. Bruton, over 46 years in Thailand, is Executive Director of Dataconsult Ltd, a local consultancy. He can be reached at chris@dataconsult.co.th. Dataconsult's Thailand Regional Forum provides meetings, seminars and extensive documentation to update business on present and future trends in Thailand and in the Mekong Region.