Singapore’s Minister of Manpower highlighted the country’s commitment to encouraging and sustaining women’s participation in the workforce in the G20’s Labour and Employment Ministerial Meeting.

Minister for Manpower Tan See Leng delivered a speech on the topic of ‘How to progress on the path towards more, better, and equally paid jobs for women’.

In Leng’s speech, he spoke about Singapore’s continued commitment towards advancing women’s participation in the workforce through an ecosystem of support. He highlighted four key tenets to Singapore’s strategy to support women in pursuing both their career and personal aspirations, as well as remaining and progressing in their careers:

(a) Facilitating women’s access to employment through national employment facilitation programmes and services that help jobseekers to overcome labour market mismatches;

(2) Enabling women to fulfil both their work and personal responsibilities through the provision of flexible work arrangements and other work-life strategies, including efforts to shape societal norms and mindsets to support work-life harmony;

(3) Shifting societal norms of women as primary caregivers, and promoting shared caregiving responsibilities; and

(4) Ensuring a fair, safe, and progressive working environment for women through enforcement and education efforts to address workplace discrimination and harassment.

Leng also shared that Singapore has dedicated 2021 as the Year of Celebrating Singapore Women.

“Through the conversations on Singapore women’s development, a national effort is underway to gather public feedback and ground-up ideas on how we can better support women to pursue their aspirations,” the Ministry of Manpower stated.