Hong Kong takes initiatives to empower women workers

Chairperson of the Women's Commission (WoC) of Hong Kong Stella Lau said Saturday that WoC has made "Women's Employment" the focus of this year's work and will continue its work in empowering women. The WoC hosted a cocktail reception here Saturday to celebrate International Women's Day 2014 with women's groups and various stakeholders in the community. When delivering a speech at the reception, Lau said the commission and the Labor and Welfare Bureau (LWB) are conducting a Time Use Survey in collaboration with the Census and Statistics Department to study the time use pattern of women and men, and to find out the reasons why Hong Kong women leave the labor market and the factors that attract them to take up employment again. The survey results will be useful for the government to consider initiatives to facilitate women to join the labor market. The survey results are expected to be announced by the end of this year, she said. Officiating at the reception, the city's Chief Secretary Carrie Lam said women are taking up a bigger share in medium and high level positions. Within the ten-year period between 2002 and 2012, the number of female managers and administrators in the private sector increased from 26 percent to 33 percent. The proportion of female professionals has also grown steadily. Statistics showed that about 8 percent of female homemakers indicated that they would be willing to work given suitable employment opportunities, Lam said. It is therefore high time for the society to explore how to facilitate women who wish to work to achieve their goals as well as to release the labor force. The WoC also announced that together with the LWB, it is developing a one-stop website which would contain information on employment services, child care services, continuing education and retraining courses provided by the government and non-governmental organizations. Lau said the website should facilitate women who wish to join the labor market to obtain the relevant information.