Speech by Minister Indranee Rajah at DBS and SG Her Empowerment’s 2024 International Women’s Day

Ms Stefanie Yuen-Thio, Chair, SG Her Empowerment (SHE)

Mr Piyush Gupta, Group CEO, DBS

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

Inspiring All to Lift Each Other Higher

A big thank you for inviting me to join this joint event by SHE and DBS to commemorate International Women’s Day. I love your theme – Inspiring all to lift each other higher – because it recognises that doing well is almost always never an individual venture. In our life journey there are many people who contribute to our success and achievements. In the context of IWD, I would like to take a quick fly through a woman’s life journey and offer a few thoughts on what we can do to help our women go higher.  

The early years

Let me start with the early years. I know that you are great parents. You make sure you invest in their education, but here are some things which I think will make a difference to the young girls even from a very early age.

Number one is confidence building. It is really very important to help your young daughter and young sister build confidence. That means allowing them to do the little things which seem to be out of their comfort zone. But we must teach them that, to allow them to have that little tumble in the playground, so that they can learn how to stand tall and strong. So, at every step of the way, from preschool all the way up to secondary school and beyond, please encourage our women with confidence building.

Second, decision making. There is a tendency to want to protect our little girls. And of course, we want to do that to some extent. But if we want them to be leaders, they are going to be able to make decision. Making decisions can sometimes be uncomfortable. We will have to start at a young age with simple things, like where do we go? Do we go to the playground today, or so we go somewhere else? Whatever it is, make a decision, and help them to understand that when they make a decision, there will be a follow through.

This is also tied to choices and consequences. Please give them choices and help them make their choices. It is not easy when sometimes you are confronted with an array of things. Which one to choose? There is so many, but you can only have one. Because life is like that.  Life will give you an array of things, and out of the array you need to choose one. Learning to make choices is an important life skill. Not only that, after you have made your choices, there are consequences and they will have to live with that. Please teach them that at an early age, whether it is choosing a book, a desk, which movie, help them make choices and teach them how to make informed choices.

Handling pressure -  pressure is something we all get, especially when we come out to work. If our girls are not sufficiently socialised to dealing with pressure in the early years, the first time they encounter real pressure in the workplace to meet deadlines and meet KPIs, they are not going to be able to deal with it well, or they will deal with it, but at great costs to their mental health and various other things.

Dealing with bullying - bullying does happen, we have seen it and now it has moved into the online space. Thus, teach our girls to stand up, stand strong and how to deal with bullies when they are young. Please prepare them for the real world. The real world is not always a comfortable place, and some people are very nice, some are not so nice.  Our girls need to know that there is a range of people out there and they need to have the skills to be able to deal with them.

At the end of the day, please just see our daughters for who they are and love them for it. There is a tendency sometimes to project our ambitions, our desires onto a child, and this applies to boys as well. I am talking specifically about the context of girls.  Sometimes there are preconceived ideas of what girls cannot or should not do. When I was young, we did not have a lot of resources at that time. My mom asked me if I wanted to take up ballet, and I will say no, I cannot see myself in a frilly tutu. I asked for taekwondo. But we did not have any taekwondo lessons at that time. When I went to school, I got a chance to do judo, which is close to it. There is an assumption that girls will be wanting to do a certain thing or should do something. Just ask her what she wants, and encourage her if it is feasible and it is not going to be detrimental to her. One very lucky thing for me was, when I grew up, my mom let me make my own choices. She pretty much left me to my own devices. My dad died at a very young age so my mom was really the parental figure. But she let me choose my subjects, my school, my career. The only thing she asked me was, are you sure? I told her I had been asked to stand as a candidate for politics. She asked the same question and I said, yeah, I think so. She said, that is fine if that is what you would like to do, go ahead and do it.

Thus, I think one of the best things that we can do for our women, our children, especially when they're young, is to give them all these life skills, and help them to be the best that they can be.

The Working Years  

Entering the working world is a major change. It marks a new life chapter. It is the start of a career and whatever happens in the working world is going to affect much of what will happen in a woman's life thereafter. Here are some things companies can do to help women with that journey. I am pleased to note that DBS is doing a lot of that already.

First, is mentorship. It really does help to have somebody who has travelled the path before and who you can go to for advice when you are at crossroads and you have difficult decisions to make. So having a mentor helps.

Second, please ask women what they think. We have all been in meetings where there is an issue to be discussed. You would notice that sometimes the women, not all but many of them, kept quiet. I am not sure whether it is purely a cultural thing, because like Sheryl Sandberg mentioned, that was one of the reasons why she wrote the book “Lean In”, and the lean in circles which takes inspiration from that. This seems to be not just peculiar to Asian cultures. I think it is maybe because we have been brought up not to put ourselves forward, not to be pushy. Whatever the reason, the fact remains is that generally speaking, women may not be as vocal when it comes to offering opinions or when it comes to making the corporate choices. Thus, one of the best things you can do, is look at the quiet ones and ask them what do you think. After you have asked them, and when they know that they can offer an opinion without getting beaten down and made to feel small, you will find that it builds confidence. Again, it is a different aspect of confidence building, and they will start to offer opinions and you will find those opinions can be some very helpful and useful. Please also ask them what kinds of skills they think they need, but do not yet have and help them to gain those skills. It is all part of their growth journey.

Please test them out in leadership roles and give them a chance. If you are not sure, you can scope it such that the role is smaller, it is a pilot project, but at least test them out so that they can try it. If they fail, fair enough, but at least you know. If they fail, it may be that you have to tell them why. So please give kind but honest feedback, because the only way they can grow is if somebody tells them what they did not do correctly and that gives them the opportunity to fix it and to do better.

Do set high expectations and high goals. Once you set a clear goal and a clear mission, they will go for it. They will be some of your best performers, but setting a goal, articulating it, telling them what you expect is very important because it helps them to know what they have to achieve. So be supportive and set them up for success.

The working years are also the ones during which people meet their life partner, get married and have children. Given that the weight of caring for family and children is still currently tilted heavily towards women, these can be particularly challenging years for women, especially if they are juggling career at the same time. 

The recent announcement of our latest TFR – 0.97 – has been the focus of much attention. Coupled with an ageing population, this can be an existential issue for us. This is something which should concern all of us.

Women are central to this. They are the ones who are bearing the children. So, if we want to have more babies and improve our TFR, we must make sure that the opportunity cost to women of doing so is not so high that they don’t want to have children at all.

This leads us to workplaces and workplace culture. We need workplaces and workplace cultures that are supportive of families as a whole, and mothers and women who are caregivers in particular.

Workplaces that recognise and support the many different roles that women shoulder and which are family-friendly make a big difference. There are myriad ways in which workplaces can be family-friendly and supportive of women.

As leaders of the organisation managers and senior executives, you set the tone in establishing a company culture where mutual respect and empathy are core tenets, and where you can make sure that meeting various work-life needs is ingrained in your company culture. This includes putting in place fair and merit-based appraisals. It is also important to create a supportive workplace environment, so that employees can have confidence that they can have support when required. I understand that this was the case for Ms Jacqueline Tan, a Managing Director under DBS’ Credit Risk Management Group. In 2018, Jacqueline wanted to have more time with her two young boys and mother, who suffered a stroke some years back. She raised it to her managers, who were empathic and encouraging, and they gave her the assurance to be able to take a sabbatical, and recommended her for a new role within DBS when she was ready to return, recognising that she still has a lot to contribute.

Line managers, these are really important. They are in charge of overseeing their team’s day-to-day work and they are key to creating a workplace norm where there is mutual understanding, and where employee’s needs and circumstances can be recognised and supported even as you make sure you meet your company’s goals. They can work with their teams to implement supportive practices in a way that makes sense for their work. For example, having a system for covering arrangements will help employees support each other and at the same time, allows the responsibilities to be fulfilled and for the employees to have a peace of mind.    

Co-workers too play a crucial role. It makes a big difference when work colleagues are supportive.  In the case of Ms Roshni Shivaramakrishnan, an Assistant Vice President in the Consumer Banking Group, she is a mother of one and will be welcoming a second bundle of joy in May. She has already worked out her maternity and return-to-work plans with her manager and teammates before her baby’s arrival, and started to train her maternity cover as well. This kind of forward planning not only helps her. It helps the team as well, and it also gives DBS the assurance that the team’s work will stay on track even during her absence.

Another area in which needs more understanding and support is when employees have to go for fertility treatments. Across the world, people are delaying marriage, and even if they marry, they are delaying having children. Age plays a factor in fertility and we then see that there are more going for fertility treatments and needs time-off. This can be emotionally quite exhausting. I think for the women who go for fertility treatments, it helps if the husband can be there with them, but not all employers understand that. Thus, being supported to both the potential mum and potential dad who are going for fertility treatments would be very helpful.

Having such good practices does not just benefit the employees. It benefits the organisation as well, in terms of your talent retention, employee morale, recruitment, all of these things. Thus, workplace culture, workplace norms make a difference.

Enabling greater shared parental responsibility

Next, enabling greater shared parental responsibility. Another key area in which we can do better is in supporting the men in their role as husbands and fathers. For two reasons – one, we should support the dads so they can better support the mums. Two, parenting is a shared responsibility. Studies show that greater paternal involvement is positively associated with marital satisfaction and child development. Thus if you help the dads be good husbands and fathers, you are helping the families and your company as well. We have also doubled paternity leave, it is voluntary for now, but it will be made mandatory. I ask employers to encourage the male employees to take paternity leave where they are able to. Our current take up rate for paternity leave is only just over 50%. There is room to improve the take up and utilisation.

I am happy to note that DBS has gone a step further and taken the initiative to implement the additional leave for your employees. One of them who has benefitted, is Mr Nicholas Tan, a Senior Associate and Project Management Specialist under DBS’ Risk Management Group.  He welcomed his first child earlier in January this year. With the additional paternity leave and strong support from his manager, he will be able to be there for his wife both emotionally and physically, and  bond with their newborn.

I encourage other companies to follow DBS’ footsteps and adjust their Human Resource (HR) practices to support their employees. We are also going to mandate the additional paternity leave as soon as possible. We are also actively exploring how to increase paid parental leave, and will work closely with Tripartite Partners to take into account the workplace adjustments that may be required to cover for employees’ extended absences.

Strengthening Workplace Flexibility

In addition to leave, having Flexible Work Arrangements (FWAs) is a very important enabler for employees to better manage their work and family commitments, and allow employers to better harness the potential of our workforce.

The new Tripartite Guidelines on FWA Requests (TG-FWAR) will facilitate such discussions, by setting out the process for employees to request for flexible work arrangements (FWAs), and for employers to consider and respond to such requests. We will also help employers further strengthen their capabilities to implement FWAs well, with clear leadership alignment, and effective HR policies and processes.

Community groups such as SHE play an important role, by raising awareness for caregivers’ needs among stakeholders and the wider public. SHE’s local research helps deepen our understanding of the challenges faced by women and caregivers in Singapore. Their outreach and education efforts complement the Government’s efforts to uplift women and support caregivers, by reminding everyone of how we can play a part. I understand that this year, SHE be focusing on empowering women at work, by looking into how workplaces can better support working women and those intending to return to the workforce. This is particularly relevant as we roll out the Tripartite Guidelines on FWA Requests and Workplace Fairness Legislation this year. 

The Later Years 

Before I conclude, let me touch on the later years. Closely tied to women's well-being and development through the years, is actually women's health. In your 20s, you do not have to worry about anything. You can pretty much eat what you want, do what you want, everything is fine.

The day you reached your thirtieth birthday, something’s changed.  As you eat that big bowl of noodles, suddenly there is this weight gain and it just does not go away, because your metabolism has changed. It does not get better. You only start to realise this when you are in your mid 40s and wondering why all the things that you used to do like jogging and exercise does not seem to work. You just cannot lose those pounds.

When menopause hits, it affects different women in different ways. Some sail through it and do not even feel it, some get really bad symptoms, apart from the hormonal imbalances, they may get brain fog.

The other thing is that, beyond 35, you will start to lose bone mass. This will be accentuated by perimenopause and menopause because your oestrogen starts to drop. Oestrogen gives you protection for your heart health. When there is imbalance, you get risks of cardiovascular diseases like the men.

Thus, in order for women to lead fulfilling lives, it is really very important to invest in your health from day one. Parents, you can ensure your child has good eating habits in the early years. But from the 20s onwards, it is really important for women to invest in your health, and also think about the diet. I encourage all women to pay attention to this, to read more, find out more, and think about what works for you. As age goes on, you will have to step up cardio and resistance training. You will need to make sure you do load bearing exercises to offset the bone loss, or the loss of density and you will have to adjust your eating.

Sleep is important. You would be surprised how closely having enough sleep is connected to weight gain or weight loss, because it has to do with helping your body's metabolism to regulate itself and it is better for your mental health.

I encourage women to take time to invest in your own health, because your young child, husband, the parents that you are looking after, and your colleagues, they depend on you. If you do not look after your own health, you will affect not only yourself, but others as well. So it is important to take that time out,  to have me-time and invest in not just your physical but also your mental well-being.

This year's Budget announced that we will have a slew of SkillsFuture measures including the $4,000 SkillsFuture credit, being able to get an additional diploma irrespective of whatever qualification you have got, and the training allowance. SkillsFuture is for people in their 40s and beyond. After a certain age, you will have new chapters of your life. So please utilise the SkillsFuture to open up new opportunities, so that you can explore new chapters.

Conclusion

We have made a lot of strides in women's development. We have still got quite a long way to go. But there is a big difference that organisations can make through their workplace practices and norms. And there is a difference that all of us can make in the way we raise our daughters, support our friends, and just invest in ourselves as women. Thank you all very much.