Press Releases, Statements and Submissions

Submission

Submission from the Women's Commission for Chief Executive's 2006-07 Policy Address

1. Women's Safety

   • Welcome the Government's re-affirmation of its "zero-tolerance" stance against domestic violence in the last Policy Address.
   • In January 2006, the Commission released a report on the strategy and action plans entitled "Women's Safety in Hong Kong: Eliminating Domestic Violence", which promotes a multi-disciplinary strategy in tackling domestic violence, and advocates gender awareness, gender equality and mutual respect and involving men in the process.
   • The Commission is encouraged that the Government has responded positively to the Commission's recommendations. The Commission calls upon the Government to continue to accord priority to this important area and the community to make concerted efforts to combat the problem.
   • The recent incident on the intrusion of privacy of an artist has aroused tremendous public concern and called for urgent action to protect the privacy and safety of women. We urge the Government to expedite its consideration on the legislation for protecting privacy and against stalking to create a safer environment for women.

2. Gender Mainstreaming

   • Welcome the remarks of the Chief Executive in the last Policy Address that before introducing new policies and measures, the Government would insist on consideration of the different needs and perspectives of men and women and promote equality of the two genders and their opportunities to do their best.
   • Hong Kong is already in a leading position internationally on promoting and implementing gender mainstreaming. We urge the Government to keep up the momentum and to apply the gender mainstreaming checklist to more policy and programme areas. The Commission will continue to work closely with the Government in this regard, with the ultimate goal of institutionalizing the checklist in the policy decision-making process in the Government and promoting its application outside the Government.
   • We will also continue to assist the Government to discharge its international obligations under the Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination Against Women and the Beijing Platform for Action.

3. Women Participation in Advisory and Statutory Boards and Community-Level Participation

   • Glad that the Government has taken the Commission's advice and set a gender benchmark of 25% as an initial working target for appointment of women to Advisory and Statutory Boards (ASBs).
   • Encouraged to note that as at February 2006, women already took up 25.6% of the appointed non-official posts of ASBs, reaching the initial working target.
   • We urge the Government to take pro-active steps to pursue a higher benchmark at 30%, a minimum standard widely recognized at the international level.
   • We also encourage the Government to continue to make efforts to reach out, identify and cultivate potential female candidates, and to ensure individual ASB meets this target as far as practicable, as well as to take measures to encourage and build up the capacity of more females to participate in public affairs at the community level.

4. Empowerment of Women

   • Welcome the remarks by the Chief Executive in the last Policy Address that the Capacity Building Mileage Programme (CBMP) launched by the Commission has successfully encouraged women of different strata to pursue continuous learning and personal development.
   • Since its launch in 2004, the CBMP has become very popular and overall enrolment exceeded 11,000 as at July 2006. It has been proven to be cost-effective and capable of penetrating into different strata of the target participants, particularly women most in need including those on CSSA, living in poverty and newly arrived, and helping them to integrate into the society.
   • We appeal to the Government's funding support for the continuous operation of the CBMP to encourage continuous learning of women, and make use of the CBMP extensively to complement existing empowerment programmes run by the Government.
   • Apart from CBMP, the WoC will work with the Government on other effective ways to further empower the less privileged women, such as unpaid home-makers and women of low-income or with disabilities, so that they can develop their capability and participate fully in the society.

5. Building Harmonious Community

   • Gender equality is the cornerstone for sustainable development and social harmony. It is of utmost importance to enable all members of the society irrespective of gender and status, to enjoy equal rights and opportunities to develop their potentials and contribute to the society.
   • The Commission has therefore set "Together We Build a Harmonious Community" as its 5-year theme, under which we aim to mobilize and collaborate with all sectors in the community, including the participation of men, to work towards this goal.
   • In June this year, we organised a conference with the same theme referred to above, in which over 400 people who are concerned about women issues participated. The exchanges were useful and would help the Commission to map out its future direction and strategies to build a harmonious and caring society through the promotion of gender equality and a better quality of life for all.
   • In particular, we see it important that all sectors of the community can work in partnership to remove gender stereotyping and arouse gender awareness, as well as to mobilize community resources to foster a stronger support network and nurture a culture of mutual care and respect. The efforts and contributions made by local women's groups in this regard have been tremendous and should be further encouraged.
   • We also encourage the Government to fortify its policies to build Hong Kong into a multicultural society where people from different ethnic and cultural background can live harmoniously.

6. Building Harmonious Families

   • Harmonious families are the foundation of a harmonious society and building harmonious families has been a common issue of interest to all in the community. We support the Government's efforts in strengthening families and rebuilding family values and resilience and suggest the Government adopt a strategic approach in formulating its family policy, as in the case we approach women's matters.
   • Nurturing caring families has been one of the work foci of the Commission in the past two years. The Commission has been taking forward two major initiatives in this respect and to empower women, and men, to become quality parents. One is a research on the core life values to be instilled in the younger generation for their personal nourishment, results of which will be released in early September. The other one is a pilot project to establish a district-based support network for parents to share experience and offer mutual help on parenting issues, as well as to provide a platform to promote the core life values to children and youth.
   • We appeal for the support of all Government departments to spearhead the above initiatives at the district level.
   • We also call on the Government to create a family friendly environment to further foster work-family balance and family solidarity. In June 2006, the Women's Commission has announced the results of a research jointly conducted with the Equal Opportunities Commission on family-friendly employment policies and practices (FEPP). We are now developing the strategies and measures to promote wider adoption of FEPP. The Government's initiative of implementing the "5-day work week" is a good start and we look forward to more efforts by the Government in leading the society towards this goal.

Women's Commission
September 2006