For International Women’s Day, make a choice

Here at Tech in Asia, we’re kicking off a full week of stories, showcasing some of Southeast Asia’s boldest, brightest, and most fearless women leaders.

The women of Tech in Asia during our company retreat to Bandung in 2019

#ChooseToChallenge

The theme for this year’s International Women’s Day is #ChoosetoChallenge. It’s a call to action, asking individuals to proactively stand up to the status quo. The goal is to empower all of us to do something to support gender parity.

This feels like an especially important appeal in 2021. As Covid-19 has upended the global workforce, women have been disproportionately affected by the adjustments to our new reality. According to a global Deloitte survey, 70% of women are concerned about their ability to progress in their careers as they now have to shoulder greater responsibility for household work. Closer to home, Singapore’s Senior Minister Tharman Shanmugaratnam has highlighted concern over “the unravelling of some of the gains in women’s participation in the labor force and sense of self-determination that were achieved over decades.”

The startup and tech sector, in particular, has many struggles with gender equality. In 2020, female-only founding teams received only 2.3% of total global venture capital dollars, whereas startups with one female co-founder raised 9%. On the flipside, only 20% of startups have a female founder. (Does this indicate correlation or causation?)

This deteriorating situation for working women, coupled with their uphill battle in tech, makes the choice to challenge the status quo more important now than ever.

Making a choice

If you know me, you know that I don’t hold back. I’m opinionated and outspoken by nature, but it has taken me years to feel comfortable enough to speak up on issues about gender and equality at work.

Early in my career, it seemed safer to keep my head down and be “results-driven” rather than call attention to issues that would make me seem problematic. I was already working my ass off to be taken seriously and given equal footing as my male colleagues; I felt like I couldn’t afford to fight another fight. I kept quiet when I noticed women being passed over for prestigious assignments, speaking opportunities, and promotions.

But a few years ago, my patience for change on others’ timelines wore thin, and I began to seek out ways to do this myself. Advocacy doesn’t come naturally to me, but I like to make things happen, so that’s where I started. I’m now on a quest to achieve gender parity at Tech in Asia events, checking our own biases when we make internal hiring or promotion decisions and tracking our own storylines to make sure we don’t fall into bad patterns. I’ve started raising a hand when other teams, panels, and events seem overly populated by men, and I’d pass along a list of great women speakers and leaders to help speed up the process.

At Tech in Asia Conference 2020

The response has been gratifying. If anything, people are thankful that someone is shining a light on the issue. Folks didn’t realize that they were unconsciously following certain behavior patterns and were appreciative of the chance to sort it out.

That said, International Women’s Day and the broader gender equality movement isn’t a call to be the most outspoken advocate or to be perfectly sensitive and attuned all the time – no one can be. But that shouldn’t stop us from trying, and it’s something that we’re all capable of: choosing to improve our workplaces and communities each day, in our own way.

Tech in Asia’s choice

At Tech in Asia, we strive to be a force for good – it’s built into our mission and DNA. With that in mind, I’ll share our own numbers and progress in our goal to achieve gender equality. I’m proud that across the company, around 52% of the staff are women. Moreover, 41% of our managerial roles and higher posts are held by women, while nearly 42% of our technical team -that’s product, engineering, and data – are women. But despite these encouraging numbers, we’re not quite there yet; we’re working to grow and develop our talent so we have even more women in our management ranks in the coming years.

The Tech in Asia team at our October 2019 conference

As we were taking stock of our performance and these figures last year, it occurred to us that while we have a large megaphone, we rarely use it to trumpet our core values. And much like my personal journey, this felt misaligned. Perhaps it was time we began exercising our own choice to amplify the values that we live by.

So we made that decision and got to work. This week, we’ll be rolling out a content series that focuses on some of the most inspiring women in Southeast Asia’s tech scene. From ask-me-anything videos with female leaders to articles and podcasts showcasing the incredible women behind the region’s biggest tech and startup brands, it has been a true privilege to help tell the stories of these inspiring leaders.

And might I note that not every profile we’ve selected is the founder or C-level of her company. While we celebrate women in leadership, we also honor women along their journey to becoming leaders as well. There is a critical middle step to manager that sets companies and future leadership teams up for success.

Ultimately, it’s not just a day, a week, or a month-long commitment to work towards gender equality and celebrating the achievements of women. We commit to exercising our choice to challenge the status quo on a daily basis. We won’t be perfect, but we will keep trying. And no matter where you are in your own journey, I hope that you keep choosing to challenge yourself as well.

Many thanks to all our partners who have worked with us to tell these stories: Aspire, Gojek, Grab, JustCo, Sea Group, and Xiaomi.