When I arrived in Hong Kong in the 1960s, government civil service policy decreed that my salary as a woman doctor was 75 percent that of a male doctor. This led to Hong Kong being one of only two jurisdictions in the world blacklisted in the British Medical Journal for doctors seeking jobs internationally, the other being South Africa because of differential pay scales for blacks and whites. Throughout the government service, marriage severely affected women’s — but not men’s — terms of service such as pension rights. It also led to my becoming a lifelong committed feminist, spending decades fighting discrimination against women.
Inequalities lurked around every corner. There was no separate taxation for married women – hence a woman had to disclose her earnings to her husband for inclusion on his tax return, but not vice versa. Men would joke to me about rape and would say, “Where’s your sense of humor?” if I did not laugh in return. Statutory maternity leave was a future dream. There were few, if any, women members of council or boards.
It is popularly believed that there was no domestic violence in Hong Kong. But in 1985, I undertook and published the first survey of battered wives in Hong Kong — indeed, in Asia — which showed a pattern of domestic violence that was almost identical to Western countries. I then chaired the committee to open a refuge for battered women, and it became obvious that spousal abuse was a problem from the poorest to the wealthiest and most influential in Hong Kong. Women living in luxury up on Victoria Peak and women in dire economic circumstances in housing estates both had no safe place to go.
Chinese male residents were allowed several legal concubines, but a woman was allowed only one husband. There were no female members of the Legislative Council until Ellen Li Shu-pui was appointed in 1966. With incredible determination and enormous opposition (rumored to be based on the number of Legislative Council members who themselves had concubines), she was instrumental in passing the 1971 Marriage Bill, which abolished polygamy. Since Oct 7, 1971, no man in Hong Kong has been able to lawfully take more than one wife or concubine.
The Chinese mainland was far ahead of Hong Kong in gender equality legislation: In 1950, within a year of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the Chinese government banned any man from having concubines, and each man could have only one wife under marriage reform laws that recognized the equality of all men and women. Concubinage was condemned as “feudalistic and backward”. Shortly afterward, in 1954, equality of men and women was stipulated in the Chinese Constitution.
Hong Kong has seen its first female chief executive, the Equal Opportunities Commission, the Women’s Commission, Harmony House shelter, and women’s organizations, and the percentage of women rising to a higher level in the workforce and on boards in government and the private sector.
Health has dramatically improved. Pregnancy and childbirth are now safe. Women in Monaco and Hong Kong live the longest in the world: Up from 73 years in the 1960s, a newborn female child in Hong Kong had an average life expectancy of over 88 years in 2024. This is usually attributed to the extremely low smoking rates among women.
The UN Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women was extended to Hong Kong in 1996. In the same year, the Sex Discrimination Ordinance came into force in Hong Kong, prohibiting discrimination against men or women based on sex, marital status, and pregnancy in employment, education, and the provision of goods, services, and facilities, as well as prohibiting sexual harassment of either men or women.
And today, the latest Global Women Peace and Security Index, measuring schooling, employment, finances, cellphone use, justice, violence, maternal mortality, and community safety in 177 countries and regions, ranked Hong Kong 39th — virtually the same as the United States at 37th. Singapore ranked 15th and the United Kingdom 26th.
Ahead of International Women’s Day on Saturday, March 8, this year, the “Women’s Rights in Review 30 years after Beijing” report to the UN secretary-general shows worldwide improvements in laws, education, and maternal mortality, but there are continuing discrepancies in politics, poverty, unpaid and domestic work, labor force participation, violence against women, climate justice, and health. Globally, only 1 in 4 seats in politics is held by a woman. Women are 25 percent more likely to live in poverty. In the workforce, women are paid 16 percent less than men, and only 1 in 4 managers is a woman.
Hong Kong has made enormous advances regarding gender equality, but, as everywhere in the world, discrepancies remain — for example, pay, public participation, sexual harassment in the workplace, and discrimination against pregnant women, and few employers have implemented family-friendly measures in the workplace.
The author is the director of the Asian Consultancy on Tobacco Control, based in Hong Kong, and a senior policy adviser to the World Health Organization.
The views do not necessarily reflect those of China Daily.
