Gender inequality remains a pressing issue

From left; Tony Schirato, Rui Flores, Agnes Lam and Brian Hall

The European Union Academic Program in Macau (EUAP-M) marked International Women’s Day yesterday with a seminar on “Women and Gender Politics: The Contemporary Situations in Europe and Macau,” held at the University of Macau (UM).
Chaired by Rui Flores, Executive Program Manager of EUAP-M, the seminar featured presentations by UM professors from the Faculty of Social Sciences, Agnes Lam, Tony Schirato and Brian Hall.
Lam believes that there is a gender pay issue in Macau which she demonstrated by presenting a study on gender inequality. According to that study, the gap between rich and poor continues to grow and in 2015 “almost 30 percent of women earned less than MOP6,000 per month and only over 12 percent earned over MOP30,000. The female-to-male earnings ratio was around 80 percent, although the scholar admits that there is no absolute accuracy in these figures, as the government has not published related data.
The study also indicates that 40 percent of women believe that men have stronger competencies and 20 percent still believe that women should avoid doing better than their partners.
“When the woman earns more than her partner, she does household chores, as a way to compensate for the man’s ego,” she explained.
Agnes Lam emphasized that the traditional ideology in China in regards to women is still present nowadays. She claimed that stereotyping in the city is a serious problem, mentioning that local newspapers continually print stories about women doing household chores, modeling women only in the home.
“We don’t have enough diversification in presenting women,” she said. “All of the independent women in HK drama series come to an unfortunate end, if not a culprit […] You can still hear these stories in the 21st century,” she added.
Lam also emphasized that Macau’s associations should stop empowering women to become a better wives and mothers, instead, [encourage them to become] better individuals.
Meanwhile Tony Schirato highlighted the issue of women’s performance in China, which is still predicated on the ability to give birth to a boy, and the expectations women get in regards to being a wife, a mother and at the same time, an employee.
“It’s a tough gig to be a women in contemporary greater China,” he said. Though he claimed that a lot has changed over the past 60 years, there is still much to be done to achieve gender equality.
Moreover, Brian Hall presented a “Macau depression study” that shows that women were 50 percent more likely to be depressed than men in almost all groups surveyed. While Hong Kong only shows a figure of 3.54 percent of women who are depressed.
Meanwhile in mainland China, a study shows that 43 percent of women experience domestic violence from their partners, associated with patriarchy and poor conflict resolution.
In terms of global violence against women, 35 percent of women have experienced intimate partner violence and non-partner sexual violence. In addition women who are victims of violence are more than twice as likely to experience depression or anxiety. Staff reporter