Ng Kai Ling
The Business Times
Sunday, Dec 09, 2012 <!-- VARIABLE RESERVED FOR CONTENT FROM V7
-->
SINGAPORE - To get more women into the workforce, keep children
in school until 7pm.
And how about allowing companies that hire more women to employ
more foreign workers?
These were among the radical suggestions thrown up yesterday by
women MPs at a dialogue session with 80 employers.
With the current labour crunch, it is "perfect timing" for firms
to think about how to get more women to enter the workforce, said
Ms Grace Fu, Minister in the Prime Minister's Office.
Ms Fu, who heads a team that is working on a paper regarding
this issue, said that the employment rate among women over 40 is
lower in Singapore than in other Asian countries such as South
Korea and Japan.
Of the 691,000 women who are not working, 43 per cent said it
was because of family responsibilities such as taking care of
children.
Further, 18 per cent of the 62,500 women university graduates
here are not economically active.
"There is a big pool of workers to tap," said MP for West Coast
GRC Foo Mee Har, who yesterday presented various ideas on how to
buck the trend.
One proposal involved setting up day-care facilities at schools
that would enable children to stay until 7pm so working parents
would not have to worry about who was looking after them.
They would be able to stay on at school and do homework or take
part in extra-curricular activities.
Other preliminary ideas floated include giving companies with
women-friendly policies more flexibility in hiring foreigners and
giving maternity leave to fathers so mothers can return to work
earlier.
Childcare leave could also be offered to single parents and
grants given to companies to help offset the cost of restructuring
human resource strategies and subsidising the cost of retraining
women who return to work.
Employers attending the session welcomed the ideas, but some
said they lacked the know-how to effectively implement flexi-work
arrangements.
Ms Laurel Loi, a director at law firm AbrahamLow, said: "It
would be good if there was a grant to help companies make use of
technology so that employees could log into the company server from
home or do tele-conferencing."
Ms Fu, who chairs the Women's Wing of the People's Action Party,
also highlighted the importance of bringing women back to the
workforce.
"If they do not stay in the workforce long enough, they do not
save enough for their old age. Women should be financially secure
as far as possible," she said.
She added that a pro-family life-work culture and flexible work
arrangements are important considerations for women, especially for
mothers who are deciding whether to continue working.
In October last year, the PAP Women's Wing said it would
champion women-related issues such as more flexible work
arrangements for mothers and easier re-entry into the
workforce.
Ms Fu said a final set of recommendations would be submitted to
the Ministry of Manpower in February next year.
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