Iranian Sara Khadem Competes At Chess Tournament Without Hijab
New Age Islam News Bureau
28 December 2022
• Afghan Woman, Marwa, Holds Solo Protest Against
University Ban; Endures Taliban Taunts
• German Luxury Brand Taps Part-Arab Model Imaan
Hammam For Its Latest Campaign
• “Hanging Judge” Abolqasem Salavati, Sentences Iranian
Woman To 10 Years For Removing Hijab, Calls It Prostitution
• Saudi Arabia: Woman Gets Dowry 33 Years After Her
Marriage
• From Pakistan To The Philippines, Women Break Open
Closed Industries
Compiled by New Age Islam News Bureau
URL: https://newageislam.com/islam-women-feminism/iranian-sara-khadem-hijab-tournament/d/128736
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Iranian Sara Khadem Competes At Chess Tournament
Without Hijab
Sara Khadem: Iranian chess
player Sara Khadem competes, without wearing a hijab.(Reuters)
-----
December 28, 2022
DUBAI: An Iranian chess player has taken part in an
international tournament without a hijab, according to media reports, the
latest of several Iranian sportswomen to appear at competitions without one
since anti-government protests began.
Iran has been swept by demonstrations against the
country’s clerical leadership since mid-September, when 22-year-old Iranian
Kurdish woman Mahsa Amini died in the custody of morality police who detained
her for “inappropriate attire”.
Iranian news outlets Khabarvarzeshi and Etemad, in
reports on Monday, said Sara Khadem had competed at the FIDE World Rapid and
Blitz Chess Championships in Almaty, Kazakhstan, without the hijab — a
headscarf mandatory under Iran’s strict dress codes.
Photos posted by both outlets appeared to show her
with no headscarf during the tournament. Khabarvarzeshi also posted a photo of
her wearing a headscarf but without saying if it was taken at the same event.
There was no comment on Khadem’s Instagram page about the tournament or the
reports.
Khadem, born in 1997 and also known as Sarasadat Khademalsharieh,
is ranked 804 in the world, according to the International Chess Federation
website. The website for the Dec 25-30 event listed her as a participant in
both the Rapid and Blitz competitions.
The protests mark one of the boldest challenges to Iran’s
leadership since its 1979 revolution and have drawn in Iranians from all walks
of life. Women have played a prominent role, removing and in some cases burning
headscarves, while protesters have taken heart from what they have seen as
shows of support from both female and male Iranian athletes.
In October, Iranian climber Elnaz Rekabi competed in
South Korea without a headscarf, later saying she had done so unintentionally.
In November, an Iranian archer said she did not notice
her hijab falling during an awards ceremony in Tehran, after a video appeared
to show her allowing the headscarf to drop in what was also widely assumed to
be a show of support for protesters.
In comments reported by state media in November,
Iran’s deputy sports minister, Maryam Kazemipour, said some Iranian female
athletes had acted against Islamic norms and then apologised for their actions.
Several national sports teams have refrained from
singing the national anthem, notably before Iran’s opening match at the soccer
World Cup. The team sang ahead of their second and third games. Iranian
authorities have cracked down hard on the protests, which they have declared
riots fomented by foreign adversaries.
According to the activist HRANA news agency, 507
protesters had been killed as of Thursday, including 69 minors. Sixty-six
members of the security forces have also been killed. State officials have said
up to 300 have been killed, including members of the security forces.
Source: Dawn
https://www.dawn.com/news/1728671/iranian-woman-competes-at-chess-tournament-without-hijab
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Afghan Woman, Marwa, Holds Solo Protest Against
University Ban; Endures Taliban Taunts
Afghan student Marwa
-----
Dec 28, 2022
KABUL: An 18-year-old Afghan student endured Taliban
taunts and insults at the weekend as she staged a solo protest against the ban
on women attending university. “For the first time i n my life, I felt so
proud, strong and powerful because I was standing against them and demanding a
right that God has given us,” Marwa said, asking not to be further identified.
Women-led protests have become increasingly rare in
Afghanistan since the Taliban’s return. Participants risk arrest, violence and
social stigma. But Marwa was adamant.
Her sister shot a video of the silent protest with a
phone from a car as Marwa held up a poster just metres from the entrance to the
Kabul University campus. In their latest assault on women’s rights, the Taliban
last week banned university education for women.
Some women have tried to protest the ban, but they
have been swiftly dispersed. On Sunday, in front of Taliban guards deployed at
the Kabul University gates, Marwa carried a placard that read “Iqra”, the
Arabic word for “read”. “They said really bad things to me, but I stayed calm,”
she said.
“I wanted to show the power of a single Afghan girl,
and that even one person can stand against oppression. ” “When my other sisters
(women students) see that a single girl has stood against the Taliban, it will
help them rise and defeat the Taliban,” Marwa said.
While the Taliban promised a softer form of rule when
they returned to power in August last year, they have instead imposed harsh
restrictions on women. On Saturday, authorities ordered all aid groups to stop
women employees from coming to work.
Source: Times Of India
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German Luxury Brand Taps Part-Arab Model Imaan Hammam
For Its Latest Campaign
December 27, 2022
DUBAI: From walking runways to starring in campaigns
for luxury brands, Imaan Hammam has proven to be one of the most in-demand
models.
The latest brand to tap the Dutch-Moroccan-Egyptian
catwalk star is German luxury brand BOSS.
This week, the brand shared a clip on social media of
Hammam wearing festive outfits from their latest collection.
In one shot, Hammam wore a glittering mini dress,
accented with a sharp black blazer, while in another clip, she was seen wearing
a black and gold cardigan paired with shorts.
She also wore a pair of sparkly shorts with a plain
black top and blazer.
Her looks were accessorized with chunky gold belts and
rings with the brand’s logo.
The model first teased the collaboration in November
by sharing clips on her page and captioning the post: “#BeYourOwnBOSS.”
The brand has tapped a number of famous faces in
recent weeks, with the likes of Australian actor Chris Hemsworth acting as the
face of BOSS Bottled Parfum and Italian tennis player Matteo Berrettini showing
off the label’s watches.
For her part, Hammam is capping off a fruitful year,
marked by a number of international campaigns.
In September, she was unveiled as the celebrity star
of a campaign by Dutch football team Ajax for their latest pre-match
collection.
The model fronted a campaign for the club’s newest
line, which is a collaboration between Adidas, Ajax and Daily Paper and is
being worn by the team during pre-match warmups.
In August, the catwalk star fronted the latest Tiffany
& Co. promotional video for the US luxury label’s Lock collection alongside
American skateboarder Tyshawn Jones.
Hammam has appeared on the runway for major fashion
houses, such as Burberry, Fendi, Prada, Marc Jacobs, Moschino, Balenciaga and
Carolina Herrera, to name a few.
Earlier this month, she attended the Qatar Fashion
United by CR Runway event during the World Cup.
She walked the runway for Off White, along with her
sister Aicha Hammam, wearing jerseys featuring the colors of Morocco’s flag.
Imaan also walked the runway wearing a white dress and a black-and-pink
structured gown.
Source: Arab News
https://www.arabnews.com/node/2222726/lifestyle
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“Hanging Judge” Abolqasem Salavati, Sentences Iranian
Woman To 10 Years For Removing Hijab, Calls It Prostitution
By Benjamin Weinthal
DECEMBER 27, 2022
Infamous Iranian regime judge Abolqasem Salavati, who
has been tagged as Iran's “hanging judge,” sentenced a 25-year-old Iranian
woman to 10 years in prison for “encouraging prostitution” because she took off
her mandatory headscarf at an anti-regime protest.
The American government news organization Voice of
America (VOA) tweeted in Persian about Mahsa Peyravi’s sentence on Sunday. VOA
wrote that the Tehran Revolutionary Court sentenced Peyravi for taking off her
headscarf in October on Mirdamad Boulevard in Tehran. She twirled her hijab in
an oft-repeated act of women’s rights defiance against the clerical men who
rule the theocratic state.
The Tehran court found her guilty of “encouraging
corruption and prostitution” for her rejection of the obligatory Islamic dress
code. She was also convicted of “assembly and collusion.” Human rights
organizations have long argued that the Islamic Republic of Iran’s opaque
judicial system fails to meet rudimentary norms for a modern legal system.
'End of Iranian dictatorship is near'
Hamid Charkhkar, an Iranian American academic, told
the Jerusalem Post that “this cruel and inhumane treatment of Iranians by the
Islamic regime in Iran shows the end for [Ali] Khamenei’s dictatorship is near.
The youth in Iran will no longer tolerate Sharia laws and they are done with
medieval Mullahs controlling their lives. Over the last 100 days, Iranians have
fought this regime every day and now for the first time in 43 years since the
emergence of Islamic fascism in Iran, most people can see a future without the
Islamic Republic.”
Iranians launched a nationwide upheaval against the
Khamenei regime after the nation’s notorious morality police killed Mahsa Amini
in September for failing to wear her hijab properly. The highly repressive
Islamic nation has been gripped with demonstrations since Amini’s murder.
Charkhkar, who
is a member of the Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists, added
“Although Khamenei and his thugs use scare tactics such as executions, torture,
and long-term prison sentences to silence people, this revolution will continue
till the day Iranians are rid of these monsters.”
Frieda Fuchs, who is also a member of the Alliance
Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists and has a PhD in government from
Harvard University, told the Post that “The control of women's minds and wombs
is a fundamental feature of theocratic regimes such as Iran...Wherever women’s
rights are attacked, so are the fundamental rights of other groups in that
society. Iranian women are the noble heirs of the enlightenment; theirs is humanity’s
struggle for freedom. Iran’s gender
apartheid regime has no place in our world. Let’s hope that one day we can look
back on theocratic Iran, where women are jailed or killed for unveiling, and
then labeled prostitutes, in the same way, that we look back at racial
apartheid South Africa: A historic anachronism.”
The Alliance Against Islamic Regime of Iran Apologists
is a US-based organization that currently seeks to secure the dismissal of
pro-Iran regime professor Mohammad Jafar Mahallati at Oberlin College in Ohio.
Amnesty International accused Mahallati of covering up the mass murder of at
least 5,000 Iranian dissidents in 1988. Mahallati served as the Islamic
Republic’s ambassador to the UN between 1987-1989. Mahallati denies the allegation
he covered up crimes against humanity in 1988.
Source: J Post
https://www.jpost.com/middle-east/iran-news/article-725972
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Saudi Arabia: Woman gets dowry 33 years after her
marriage
Sakina Fatima
23rd December 2022
Riyadh: The Kingdom of Saudi Arabia‘s court has
ordered a man to pay dowry to his ex-wife 33 years after they got married,
local media reported.
The court order came after woman in her 50’s filed a
lawsuit before the personal status court, in which she stated that she had
gotten married 33 years ago and had five children before her marriage ended,
and that she had not received her dowry of 50,000 Saudi riyals since that time.
According to Arabic daily Okaz, the woman explained
the court that she had not claimed the dowry before because her ex-husband was
a stock trader and needed the cash for his business, but he did not fulfill his
promise to pay her the dowry.
At the hearing, the man denied the woman’s claim of
not receiving her dowry, citing her silence on the case for 33 years. He
alleged that his remarriage prompted his ex-wife to file the lawsuit.
It is reported that after considering the matter, the
court ruled that the woman is entitled to the dowry stipulated in the marriage
contract, and ordered the man to pay it.
Islamic law required the groom to pay a dowry, or
mahar, as a gift of money or goods to his future wife at the time of the
wedding.
Islam does not specify maximum or minimum rates and
limits for dowry but recommends moderation. The average dowry for middle-class
families in Saudi Arabia is 30,000 Saudi riyals,but it can reach hundreds of
thousands of riyals for the wealthy.
Source: Siasat Daily
https://www.siasat.com/saudi-arabia-woman-gets-dowry-33-years-after-her-marriage-2486919/
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From Pakistan to the Philippines, women break open
closed industries
In a cockpit somewhere over the clouds, Suwapich
“Windy” Wongwiriyawanich lost sight of the curvature of the earth. There was to
one side of her, the receding night sky and to the other, the glow of day
breaking. “This is the place I should be,” the flight attendant mused. “Here in
front of the plane — not in the back.”
Those five minutes, floating between Thailand and
India, set a new course for Suwapich. She applied to AirAsia’s first class of
Thai cadets, clocked 2,000 flying hours, and became one of its first women
pilots. Two decades on, Capt Windy still catches passengers by surprise when
the timbre of her voice spills out of a plane’s speakers.
Windy’s journey from cabin to cockpit is part of a
wider story as more women across Asia take the controls in professions long
dominated by men.
Women claiming new spaces, and clamouring for equality
in them, is creating ripple effects for the larger gender ecosystem and for
generations to come.
For the first time in history, women in Asia now hold
more combined wealth than in any region except North America, and the total is
growing more rapidly than anywhere else in the world.
Charting new vocational terrain, women in Asia
(excluding Japan) are adding $2tn to their wealth each year and will hold $27tn
in 2026, according to analysis done by Boston Consulting Group for Nikkei Asia
this year. That is $6tn more than forecast for women in western Europe.
The surge is driven, in part, by women venturing into
careers previously home only to men.
Also at play are factors such as parental leave and
social structures, including reproductive rights and child care in homes with
three generations or relatively cheaper nannies.
“Female workers, whether they work online or offline,
who have some family support, have greater flexibility to work longer hours and
expand their business,” said Hue-Tam Jamme, an assistant professor at Arizona
State University. She is also a fellow at JustJobs Network, a labour think-tank
whose research in Thailand and Cambodia shows women do twice as much unpaid
care work as men.
Rising levels of education, urbanisation and travel
have also reshaped gender mores.
But despite the glossy statistics and rising
employment, women remain the second sex financially — they will need 151 years
to close the economic gap with men if nothing changes, the World Economic Forum
said in a report that measured pay, unemployment, access to finance and land,
among other data.
In many places, women are also fighting conservative
families to carve out paths for themselves that are still considered
unorthodox. Ishmita Nagi, a former fashion designer who swapped one runway for
another when she became a pilot at Indian carrier IndiGo, said she has crossed
paths with many such women. “I salute those girls . . . because
I don’t
think that without the immense support that I have had from my family I could
have come so far,”
she told Nikkei Asia in an interview.
According to a UN report, a poor and rural woman is 5
times as likely as a rich urban woman to get married before the age of 18 . . .
21.8 times as likely to have never attended school. . .
5.8 times as likely to become an adolescent mother. . .
1.3 times as likely to have no access to money for her
own use. . .
and 2.3 times as likely to report she has no say in
how money is spent.
Poverty and location also lead to significant
variations within a country.
On a crisp, sunny winter morning, 13-year-old Jahanara
Alam was on her way to volleyball practice in Khulna, about 200 kilometres from
Bangladesh’s capital, Dhaka. Dressed in sports attire, she was spotted by a
cricket coach and asked if she might be interested in the sport. It was 2006,
and Bangladesh was about to assemble its first national women’s cricket team.
Stunned into acceptance, Alam went into training.
Alam’s team went on to take silver at the 2010 Asian
Games, and in 2018 pulled off a surprise win against defending champions India
at the Women’s T20 Asia Cup. She was also the first Bangladeshi bowler to take
a five-wicket haul in women’s T20 international cricket.
At the other end of the subcontinent, Urooj Mumtaz
grew up playing cricket behind a carpet factory in Karachi, Pakistan. As a teen,
she was captaining a boys’ team at the local club. “There still isn’t a girls’
team at the club,” Mumtaz told Nikkei Asia in an interview.
In 2006, she went on to captain Pakistan’s national
cricket team, and later became the country’s first woman to commentate on an
international men’s match.
Jahanara Alam, the first Bangladeshi bowler to take a
five-wicket haul in women’s T20 international cricket.
‘If the (men) are getting 100% then we are getting
maybe 30 to 40%,’
Urooj Mumtaz, the first woman in Pakistan to
commentate on an international men’s cricket match
Both Alam and Mumtaz have managed to score a few wins
on equality in their countries. Basics such as airfare, accommodation and gear
have been secured, but several innings remain to achieve pay parity.
“If the [men] are getting 100 per cent then we are
getting maybe 30 to 40 per cent,” Alam said in an interview, noting the gap was
narrower now than when they were making 5 to 10 per cent a decade ago. Mumtaz
said there was a fivefold gender pay differential in the highest category of
cricket in Pakistan.
“When you get better facilities, when you pay them
better . . . when you give them better travel, better hotels to
stay at, everything translates into better results,” she said.
Several players and branding agencies have called on
cricket boards to sharpen the spotlight on female cricketers via marketing
campaigns. More fans would mean bigger television audiences and the promise of
lucrative endorsement deals, which can run into hundreds of thousands of
dollars for individual cricketers.
India in October announced equal cricket match fees
for women and men, following a similar edict by New Zealand in July. The move
was cheered by many across the game, including legendary former Indian captain
Sachin Tendulkar.
Yet for all the progress, the current system keeps
producing similar results year after year: men outnumbering women in the most
powerful and well-paid posts. One systemic reason is hiring. Human recruiters
rely partly on professional networks, often dominated by men, while algorithmic
recruiters rely on historical data that refer to prior people in those roles —
also often men.
Gendered structures and social conditioning can also
disadvantage men, says Yen Do, a Vietnamese investor focused on gender
equality. “Men also bear tremendous social biases, [that they] should be the
sole or main breadwinners, should have enough money and assets to find a wife,”
she said.
When top chip companies, from Taiwan Semiconductor
Manufacturing Company (TSMC) to Qualcomm, want to know what ails their
integrated circuits, they call Dr Hsieh Yong-Fen. Taiwan’s first female PhD in
materials science and engineering sees the business she founded, MA-tek, as a
technical doctor that diagnoses problems in research, design and production.
“There are no stereotypes and gender barriers in my
company,” Hsieh said in an interview at her office in the chip hub town of
Hsinchu, where she leads meetings by drawing colourful graphics on
floor-to-ceiling whiteboards that blanket two walls.
Taiwan dominates the world’s supply of computer chips,
which run everything from phones to laptops and cars. Nearly 30 per cent of
MA-tek engineers are women in an industry striving for parity.
At TSMC, which accounts for more than half of the
global market for contract chip fabrication, women make up 13 per cent of
managers and 21 per cent of technical hires — still less than the company’s
2030 targets of 20 per cent and 30 per cent, respectively.
Over in Vietnam, where Intel has its largest global assembly
site, 33 per cent of its technical staff are female. This is short of the 40
per cent it aims to have in five years.
Ho Thi Thu Uyen has been with Intel since it entered
Vietnam in 2006, becoming the first Vietnamese senior manager at the US
company, one of Ho Chi Minh City’s biggest exporters.
“When [girls] are in high school, we have student
sessions, we invite them to tour the factory, we have female engineers talk to
the students,” Uyen, now a public affairs director, told Nikkei Asia, adding
there are internships and “a lot of support so that they feel more confident in
choosing engineering and technology”.
The semiconductor firms are starting to break past an
event horizon. Research shows “when women make up at least 30 per cent of a
particular [science, technology, engineering, and mathematics] field, other
women are drawn to that field . . . the belief being that the behaviours, interactions,
and culture of the field have been influenced by women, and issues such as
power dynamics and feelings of isolation are less problematic,” Roberta Rincon,
associate director of research at the Society of Women Engineers, told Nikkei
Asia.
In addition to representation, studies show a
correlation between reproductive rights and women’s wealth.
The impact of children depends, first, on a woman’s
right to choose and, second, on the care available. Though abortion rights vary
widely across Asia, they are relatively strong in some countries. The region
accounts for nearly half of the world’s 73mn terminations a year, according to
the Guttmacher Institute.
That stems in part from son preference. Yet it also
reduces the odds of unintended pregnancies that force mothers to quit the
workforce.
Data from the World Bank also show that women in the
region, on average, are having fewer children.
Yen Do, an investment manager at Beacon Fund, which
backs female entrepreneurs, believes greater education and urbanisation are
changing views about gender roles.
The Asian Development Bank puts urbanisation in the
Asia-Pacific at 54 per cent, rising to 64 per cent by 2050.
For one segment of the region’s working mothers, child
care comes from an army of affordable domestic helpers; for another, it’s
live-in grandparents. Three-generation households are more common in Asia and
Africa than the rest of the world, according to the United Nations.
Capt Jul Laiza C Beran, the first female fighter pilot
in the Philippine Air Force, will have help from a nanny and in-laws when she
has a child next year. After maternity leave she’ll need to retrain, fly
sorties with an instructor, and stay fit for a job with intense physical
demands like withstanding gravitational force at high altitudes.
Beran enlisted in the military after a childhood of
midnight evacuations and pitched battles between the army and separatists in
Cotabato province in the country’s south. “I wanted to take the road less
travelled by women and prove that a woman could be a combat-ready pilot and man
stealth aircraft,” she said.
Nivedita Bhasin was awed by aircraft she saw as a
girl. In New Delhi, she’d stare out her classroom window, dreaming of flying
the planes that soared past. One day, an algebra teacher hurled a piece of
chalk at Bhasin and yelled, “Well, you’ll get a big zero if you keep looking
out the window.”
Thirteen years later, in 1989, Capt Bhasin became the
youngest woman in the world to command a commercial jet aircraft; she was 26.
“It turned out that I had to look out the window. That’s the job, that’s how I
earned my living,” she said.
Bhasin reported back to work when each of her two
children was six weeks old. “This is really heart-wrenching when I think of it
now,” she said in an interview. Her airline had no rules about pregnancy; she
was India’s first airline pilot to have given birth.
The country has the world’s highest proportion of
female pilots, 12.5 per cent, the International Society of Women Airline Pilots
estimates.
Yet this is also a country that ranks 135 of 146 on
the World Economic Forum’s ranking of nations based on gender parity. With
662mn women, India lags in overall labour force participation, healthcare, the
female-to-male literacy ratio, income equality and representation in political,
technical and leadership roles, the WEF said.
But when it comes to taking to the skies, trailblazers
like Bhasin say women pilots in India have benefited from active outreach,
including state subsidies for expensive flight schools. Private companies, such
as Honda Motorcycle and Scooter India, provide full scholarships for 18-month
training sessions and placement at commercial airlines.
Women who show up on turf that had long been
considered the preserve of men don’t always get a warm welcome. “Well, it’s
still called a cockpit.”
Capt Beran, who became a pilot 30 years later, has had
a smoother ride. At first, air force protocol catered to men, from bathrooms to
safety gear. But it adapted, and Beran now feels camaraderie with her male
colleagues — important for the high-stakes, dangerous missions they execute
together.
“It’s a very risky aircraft, fast and powerful,” she
said. “All you can think about is performing a scramble or hitting the target
or flying in formation. There’s pressure on your mind and body.”
Commuters may be used to hopping in a taxi to be
greeted by a male driver, but more women are taking the wheel.
Companies such as Thailand’s GrabCar for Ladies and
India’s Hey Deedee delivery women fill a gap in the market.
“From the safety point of view also, it is good to
have female clients who, too, feel comfortable with a woman driver,” said
Pooja, a taxi driver in New Delhi who goes by one name. She had stints driving
for Uber, Ola and a private client, but moved to part-time work with the birth
of a daughter in 2020.
The gig economy has attracted women who say apps like
ride-hailing or bTaskee, Vietnam’s odd jobs platform, allow freedom to set
schedules around child care or other activities. This was the top motivation
cited by Indonesians and Indians when polled by Uber for a 2018 report.
In 2018, Grab reported an annual jump of more than 230
per cent in south-east Asian women drivers. But the pandemic has accentuated a
long-running debate about whether flexibility, including remote and gig work,
helps or harms women. “The platform economy tends to reproduce rather than
overturn traditional gender roles, while adding extra working hours to women’s
busy schedules,” said JustJobs Network’s Jamme.
Her research found that when women do gig jobs, they
have less leisure time and lack access to healthcare, pensions, and training.
The Friedrich Ebert Foundation’s 2020 report on women
in Asian economies drew similar conclusions, suggesting: “Rethink the
social-protection infrastructure to better include those who work from remote
locations or in flexible work environments.”
In Thailand, marketing professional and part-time Grab
cab driver Suthamat drives for another kind of freedom: financial. “I’m a
working girl. I don’t want to just stay home and do nothing,” she said, weaving
her sedan through Bangkok’s gridlock. Her husband and sons encourage her to
retire but she prefers to make money, enabled by independent contractors’ low
barriers to entry.
As women move into cities, they “get exposed to a freer
life”, said Beacon’s Yen. That includes more freedom to work and absorb the
urban marketplace of ideas, such as who can be an executive or an engineer or
an athlete.
As Suthamat and others accumulate savings, they are
moving it into more financial products, prompting banks such as UBS and HSBC to
introduce services for female clients.
Women who earn more than $75,000 a year and hold
assets worth between $100,000 and $1mn, the mass affluent, are a high-growth
target market.
“Asia’s mass affluent women are becoming more
financially savvy, confident and active in their investments” and “managing and
growing their wealth more than ever before,” said Jenny Wang, head of premier
wealth solutions at HSBC. The number of women in this category in Asia has risen
14 per cent since the pandemic started, she said.
The ranks of women on the other side of the desk are
also growing at banks like BDO in the Philippines and JPMorgan Asia. Women make
up 30 per cent of the region’s wealth managers versus 10 per cent in Europe,
says recruiting firm Korn Ferry.
Wing Commander Namrita Chandi was in the second batch
of helicopter pilots allowed into the Indian Air Force and the first woman in
her family to earn a pay cheque.
While she felt no discrimination on the job, organisational
policy lagged the times. Women were allowed only short-service commissions, so
Wing Commander Chandi was forced to retire after serving for 15 years.
She moved to the courts, and after an eight-year
fight, the Supreme Court of India ruled that the defence forces had to allow
women to become permanently commissioned officers. Short-service officers miss
out on benefits that lead to wealth, most notably a career path to the top and
pensions.
“This is for the next generation of women. I hope they
can make a difference to humanity and a greater difference to the world.”
The Indian Air Force allowed women fighter pilots as
an “experimental scheme” in 2016, and announced this year it would make the
move permanent.
Institutional structures are being questioned in
sports, too. “Men make a lot of money from endorsements, from sponsorships,
from commercial activities and franchise cricket. That’s where probably the
biggest buck is,” Mumtaz said. “All the years that I played cricket I actually
put in money as opposed to getting back or getting paid.”
Pakistan and Bangladesh plan to launch women’s
professional leagues next year, bringing women a step closer to groups like the
Indian Premier League for men, which has drawn players and profits to the
sport.
They would also highlight inequality in professional
sports, including limited female coaching roles, media coverage, investment and
opportunities for advancement.
Across industries, merit is not always enough to
overcome incumbent advantage.
In a survey of 2,000 people across Asia by recruiter
Hays, 60 per cent said leaders had a “bias toward hiring” and promoting “people
who look, think or act like them.” Many studies have shown that female and
minority candidates’ odds improve when recruiters use anonymous résumés and
that diversity correlates with business performance.
Until equality comes — whether in the 151 years
forecast by the World Economic Forum or sooner — women are reaching for it in
their advocacy and daily work.
As cricketer Alam put it, “I have to set a benchmark
for the next generation.”
Source: FT
https://www.ft.com/content/99bfaaaf-1f9f-4a66-bf05-f0252e251ff9
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