Tackling gender equity this International Women’s Day

This article is part of “Embrace Equity,” Tech in Asia’s campaign for International Women’s Day 2023. As we move to boost support for women in tech, we’re unpacking the idea of equity and exploring what it really means by facilitating candid, thoughtful conversations about how we can achieve a fair and equitable tech ecosystem.

Dear readers,

Over the last two years, Tech in Asia has been commemorating International Women’s Day (IWD) by rolling out compelling content. We’ve featured some of Southeast Asia’s leading women in tech, telling their stories and highlighting the ups and downs they’ve faced on their journeys.

But we decided to do something different this year, drawing inspiration from the theme for IWD 2023: #EmbraceEquity.

If you’ve been following our content this week, you’d know that equity is not the same as equality: Where equality offers everyone the same resources or opportunities, equity recognizes that everyone comes from different circumstances and allocates the exact resources and opportunities needed to reach an equal outcome.

Through our content this week, we hope to get our community to think more actively about gender equity and contemplate how they can make our ecosystem a more equitable place.

Addressing the question of equity

We kicked off IWD this year with a think piece by Maria Li, Tech in Asia’s COO. She discussed the qualifications we focus on to gauge those who have made it in the tech world and detailed why some of the criteria used to identify potential success stories – personality traits, industry expertise, and track record, to name a few – effectively disqualifies women from getting growth opportunities. It’s a complex issue that has major ramifications for achieving true gender parity.

This was followed by a social experiment where we examined if people really understood the difference between equity and equality. We presented them with different scenarios and asked them to identify which scenario represented which concept. It was a thought-provoking session: Many participants realized that while the two concepts are similar, understanding the difference is vital to furthering diversity efforts.

Another key part of this week’s efforts involved our editorial content on the site. To reflect the 15% gender pay gap that exists in Southeast Asia, we redacted 15% of our content on the site. Through this, we hope to visibly and tangibly represent the impact of this pay gap, bringing awareness to the issue and urging the industry to take action.

We’re glad to report that our community has been very supportive of the move. Many thought it was a great idea, and no one complained about not being able to read articles in full. The Drum, a publication focused on marketing insights and news, featured the intiative on its site as well.

We also sat down with managers and employees from tech firms for a heartfelt chat on camera about their experiences. They explored some hard-hitting topics such as whether they were being fairly paid, how their companies support workplace equity, and their own journeys as women in tech:

• Face to Face: AWS Singapore’s country manager and head of enterprise business
• Face to Face: Foodpanda’s APAC CEO and VP of comms

Other content that we rolled out for IWD 2023 include:

• A peek into Maria’s life in an episode of Unfiltered (a great watch, if you’ve ever wondered what it’s to be a COO of a media startup)
• An update to our list of the women running the show among Southeast Asia’s top-funded tech companies
• WhiteCoat’s COO and general counsel Clara Leow answering some of our burning questions about her startup journey

We also held a relaxing lunch and yoga event for tech leaders to unwind, connect, and have deep conversations on topics like imposter syndrome and setting boundaries. Natalie Koh, medical advisor at WhiteCoat, and Olivia Yiong, co-founder of Cheak, shared some thoughts and insights about these matters.

Take the first step

It’s been quite the week here at Tech in Asia. We hope we’ve given our community some food for thought to spur them towards making changes in how they live and work to remove gender inequity.

Our IWD event in session / Photo credit: Tech in Asia

However, celebrating IWD meaningfully is just one element of the larger mission we have as an ecosystem to drive greater equity in our region.

It isn’t enough to devote just a few days of the year to this endeavor. We need to be consistent in our efforts to consciously break down the barriers – systemic and otherwise – that stand in the way of women and to question our assumptions and biases. That’s why our Women in Tech campaign aims to provide support all year round: If your organization feels strongly about this, then let’s collaborate on getting these important stories out there.

This is a journey that we have to embark on together, so let’s take this step for a better and more equitable future.

Happy International Women’s Day.

Thank you to Amazon Web Services and Foodpanda for collaborating with us on this year’s IWD campaign.