10 Jun 2016
Mr Vice-President,
Singapore has been fully committed to ensure that women and girls are protected, supported and empowered since our independence over 50 years ago.
Equal opportunities are available to all citizens, irrespective of their gender, and women are integral and equal members of our society.
Singapore was ranked 13th on the Gender Inequality Index in 2014.
Today, our women and girls are among the best educated in the world.
Women are better represented and occupy important leadership positions in the public, corporate and civil society sectors.
Women make up 23% of the judges in the Supreme Court, 6 of the 23 Permanent Secretaries in the Civil Service and 2 of 5 of our mayors are women.
Our current Speaker of Parliament, Mdm Halimah Yacob, became the first woman to hold this important position in 2013.
Singapore was also listed as the best place to be a mother in Asia in 2015.
But we are fully aware that women tend to shoulder disproportionate responsibility for care of the family.
We are therefore doing more to try to reduce the work-family trade-offs that many of them face.
For instance, Employers are encouraged to implement flexible work arrangements under the WorkPro scheme.
Singaporean working mothers are entitled to 16 weeks of paid maternity leave. This will also be extended to support unwed mothers from early 2017.
We also encourage fathers to support their spouses in parenting. We extended government-paid paternity leave to up to two weeks in 2015, with the Civil Service leading the way in its implementation.
Despite this progress, we recognise that more can be done. The Diversity Action Committee, established in 2014, seeks to build up the representation of women directors on boards of companies.
We also review our legislation such as the Women’s Charter to ensure that they are robust and relevant to changing family trends in Singapore. We are actively reviewing the need to repeal marital rape immunity.
In the international arena, we continue to share our experience in promoting gender equality, for example, by conducting training programmes on women and leadership for our foreign partners.
We remain firmly committed to strengthening international cooperation to attain Sustainable Development Goal 5 and ensure that no woman or girl is left behind.
Thank you Mr Vice-President.