Offbeat | Singapore’s female professionals lag men in earnings, Times says

Female professionals in Singapore are, in some cases, earning just half the amount of their male counterparts, the Straits Times reported.

High-paying jobs with the widest earnings gap between the genders include specialist medical practitioners and managing directors or chief executives, the paper said, citing data from the Ministry of Manpower.

The data highlights room for improvement in Singapore even as the city-state was ranked in the top group for nations that have achieved high equality in human development between women and men. Singapore was ahead of the U.S., U.K. and Canada in the United Nation’s Human Development Index in 2017.

A government-backed Diversity Action Committee said two years ago that it wants to double women’s representation on company boards to 20 percent by the end of the decade. Singapore still lags most financial hubs when it comes to gender diversity on corporate boards, so much so that the committee started calling out companies with no female directors last year.

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