By Marcus Lin
Singapore women received a pat on the back from NTUC Secretary-General (SG) Chan Chun Sing for all that they have achieved over the years, and also a reminder that more needs to be done.
Speaking at a dialogue session at the NTUC International Women’s Day event organised by NTUC’s Women And Family Unit on 5 March 2016, SG Chan said: “We should congratulate ourselves for the progress that we have made. But don’t forget we still have many challenges.”
He identified the three big challenges that NTUC will have to work on – helping women re-enter the workforce after an absence, re-skilling them for re-entry and ensuring retirement adequacy with enough CPF savings.
DEFINING OWN SUCCESS
Feeling strongly that women should not be benchmarked against the men’s standards, SG Chan said: “For me, men and women are created differently. They all have their respective strengths and weaknesses. I don’t think we should always put the two of them together and let someone else define what I call the standard of success or the yardstick of success.”
He was confident that “our womenfolk have the requisites to strike out on their own in many areas, where arguably they will do even better than the men.”
He added: “We shouldn’t force the women into a situation whereby they feel that they must succeed in their careers in order to be successful.
I never believe in that. We should allow the women the option to pursue their different definitions of success.
“They can be successful career women if they are able and want to. They can be successful parents, a mother bringing up the next generation, which to me is no less an important task and arguably an even more important task.”
MOVING FORWARD
Unlike other countries where women are trying to fight for equal rights, gender equality and so on, SG Chan pointed out that Singapore has moved beyond that stage.
“In fact, we are confident enough to say that for women today in Singapore, we are looking at how they can contribute in their own right, not just for equal rights, but over and beyond equal rights in their own.
Source: NTUC This Week
