| Summary: | The battle of the sexes is never over, in fact, is never more intensely
fought than in this age of money- and power-driven society. How much
women have established in obtaining equal rights is a question close to our
hearts and one we will be involved with in the near future.
Singapore's success as an international financial center is a story
proudly told around the world. With the maturity of the banking sector,
the focus now is shifting to the development of the insurance industry. The
overall population in the insurance industry, with the exclusion of
insurance agents, is dominated by female employees. Being the first
students to graduate from a business degree, we find it especially intriguing
to include in our report aspects regarding female executives in the
insurance industry in Singapore.
The objectives are to derive whether .discrimination against women
exists, the wage gap, if any, between male and female employees of the
same level, how women are coping with such inequalities and how they
manage career and family at the same time.
Interviews were conducted with male and female executives of
leading insurance companies to give a personal feel to our report For the
female executives, questions were asked regarding their experiences and
views on the various topics to be discussed in the report proper. The male
executives provided an interesting insight · into How men regard their
female counterparts. Interviewees all belong to the executive level and
statistics derived are exclusive of insurance agents. References are often made to the international climate followed by
the local context so as to provide a more vivid picture of how women
around the world are faring and hence, enabling a comparison to be
made.
The Census of Population 1990, newspaper reports and books on
working women provide good sources of information. These references,
together with the interviews conducted in the local insurance industry, form
the basis of our report. The bibliography, at the end of our report, carries
the names of these references which are also indicated alongside the
relevant sections of the body of the report.
The main context of our report is made up of several topics. All of
them are related to a working woman's life: her family and career, the way
society reacts to her ambitions and the opinions of her superiors and male
counterparts. We also probe the issue of discrimination of women at work
and in income. A summary of these topics is set out in the first chapter -
The Introduction.
Besides compiling and consolidating the information gathered,
statistical data of both international and local samples are analysed too.
When we drew conclusions based on these findings, we tried to be fair and
objective in our interpretations.
The Conclusion of our report highlighted one of the focuses of our
project, and that is whether there is a wage gap between the income of
male and female executives. On the average, female executives' income,
ranging from $2492.58 to $3128.38, is less than the average income of the male executives which ranges from . $3168.52 to $4186.74. But the
significance of this discrepancy has to be reduced due to the fact that the
mean age of the female executives interviewed is between 32 to 35 and that
of the male executives interviewed is between 36 to 41. This age difference
accounted partly for the wage gap.
We have deduced from our findings that the major problem working
women face is the trying efforts of balancing family and career. Women
find it a strain coping with both responsibilities that demand full
commitment Resulting in them being incompetence for both work and
family. Therefore recommendations are made to ease women's burden at
home. Building "granny" flats and more childcare centres will solve the
problem of children needing to be looked after.
The growing number of unmarried women is a cause for concern as
it will lead to a diminishing population. The solution comes in the way of
encouraging women to participate in more social activities.
For women to work under an improved environment and be able to
pursue a career without having much to worry, society must do its part to
change the traditional attitudes that place working women at a
disadvantage. We hope through our report a better understanding of
working women's difficulties can be achieved Society will be aware of its
influence on the success of career women and therefore be able to lend a
helping hand
Only when women are given a chance to compete fairly with their
male counterparts can the society creates a healthy environment for the best to realize their potential and serve to the benefits of the country.
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