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Madam President Halimah Yacob
Senior Parliamentary Secretary Assoc Prof Muhammad Faishal Ibrahim,
Ministry of Social and Family Development
NTUC Central Committee members
Tripartite partners, sisters and brothers
A very good afternoon to all of you. Thank you for spending this afternoon together with the Labour Movement to celebrate our International Women’s Day!
Women’s Important Role in National Development
I couldn’t have said it better just now, when our sister share what importance our women do in our society. Not only are you the anchor at homes, but over the last fifty years of our nation’s history, you have become that foundation of our nation’s success in nation building. Literally from the womb, to the family, to NS, to now ah boys to men. Including even now when all of us are cornered to clap our hands for their success in the Labour Movement.
Women not only take care of our families, especially in our more traditional eastern culture, but importantly, over our nation’s founding years, they also increasingly represented the labour force. In the 1970’s, women formed about one third of the workforce. Today, we have gone to almost half. Women were mostly in the manufacturing sector and they left the comfort of their homes and stepped into factories. They became not only an asset to their families, but played the important role in our community’s success and our country’s success.
Women Workers at the Heart of Labour Movement
Correspondingly, women in the trade unions, the numbers started to grow as well. And in 1973, the Labour Movement’s NTUC’s Women’s Committee was formed, so that we can encourage more women to not just come into the workforce, but also become union members. While this was an important move, because this committee provided the structure to enable more research findings and address women’s socio-economic issues, foster and embrace women in the workforce and most importantly develop women in leadership positions starting from the union.
To celebrate International Women’s Year, it started all the way back in 1975 on the 1st September. Just now Mdm President was saying that how come we are celebrating Women’s Day on a different day? It should be a women’s month. But in 1975, actually the whole world celebrated the International Women’s Year? I don’t know whether you realised. And the inaugural Women’s Seminar organized by NTUC was themed, “Towards Greater Participation and Contribution of Women in National Development”. This was a national all the way in 1975.
At that seminar, some three hundred women of our women trade unionists came together not only to celebrate their achievements but address issues that working women were facing.Our then Prime Minister, Mr Lee Kuan Yew said this at that seminar in 1975:“The only difference between men and women are the physical and biological ones. Women are equal to men in intellectual capacity.” Well, I can’t agree with him more. In fact, since I was a former education minister, I think women have a slight advantage in the intellectual capacity itself. At least in the earlier years.
Making a Difference for Women
The women’s participation in the labour force started to grow rapidly, it mirrored the industrialization of our Singapore’s economy. Then more and more of our women workers came into the union and became union leaders. They started to focus and switch gears towards women workers and the issues of why women were earning lesser than men when they had similar job roles. Women of that time faced such challenges by virtue of their dual roles,in the family and workplace. Because of the different pressures from the family and organisations, it often resulted in women’s early exit from the workforce.There was a missing element in the support structure for our women who were both multitasking at home and at workplace.
To continue to empower women and enhance their participation and status in the workforce, the women union leaders in the Labour Movement then pioneered two key efforts –
• provide childcare support for women who became mothers and
• help them transit back to work
Role of NTUC Childcare to Support Women
In 1977, the NTUC Women’s Programme,headed by then DSG Sister Yu-Foo Yee Shoon, set up the NTUC Childcare. In the late 70s and early 80s, childcare services were mostly just custodial. They met however the immediate needs of mothers who were eager to enter the workforce to provide that sense of security and very practical assistance in helping the women folks look after their children. So many women could join the workforce or re-join the workforce to provide that additional income for their family. But because NTUC Childcare did not just believed in the custodial role of looking after the children, it wanted to develop the a curriculum and education to provide a holistic development and education for our children in early childhood. So that is what we have in My First Skool. With this support structure, women became more confident that their children needs are in good hands and they could really go back full steam into the workforce and focus on their careers.
Additionally, as more women entered the workforce, NTUC called upon private sectors to also build childcare facilities at their workplace. We partner with the companies and built more childcare facilities closer to or at workplaces, family bonding also increased. Why? Children make their journey with their parents to commute to and from work together. NTUC did not stop there. In 1985, NTUC successfully lobbied the government for higher childcare subsidies to help ease the economic burden of more families.
Back to Work Programme to Support Women
In 1995, the NTUC Women’s Programme helped women re-enter the workforce in another way via training, skills upgrading, flexible work arrangements with also a push for jobs closer to home.This led to the launch of the Back to Work (B2W) Programme in 2006 under the leadership of Sister President Halimah Yacob, who was then the Director of the Women’s Programme and Women’s Committee.
The NTUC Women’s Committee’s has a rich history. And the successful programmes not only our position well, but positioned our sister well that she became the president of the republic. So the Women’s Committee made efforts to push in practical ways helping women get back to work, amongst many other programmes and initiatives to help our women workers, are very commendable. These could not have been achieved without the strong leadership and passion of our past and present cohorts of women union leaders.For the Labour Movement to continue to build on the efforts to help women workers at the workplace, we would need to have more women union leaders like sisters Ho Shiong Yee, Noorfarahin bte Ahmad,Chua Li Jun and Kayathri Veerapandian. These are our current generation of young women leaders. And we want to give them the exposure We also need more women in leadership roles to ensure gender diversity in the workforce.
Need to Raise More Women Union Leaders
This said,I would like see more of our women union leaders. Women union leaders are key indecision-making in the trade unions to represent the need of our women workers. NTUC will work with our unions to enable more women union leaders to rise to leadership roles through a leadership development journey.
Today, as we face a tighter labour force and limited manpower growth, every worker matters. Our working woman matters. Therefore, we must strive to support our working women to keep up with the transformation of our economy.We need to build workplaces that nurture and groom women for leadership roles. And most importantly, we shall raise women union leaders of the future!
So, sisters and brothers, on this note, Let’s March On for women!
