Today's session is not about getting angry, but getting even - getting even pay,' said moderator Tara Joseph, executive producer at Thomson Reuters, at a panel organised by The Women's Foundation and the French Chamber of Commerce on the gender gap in pay.
Joseph set the tone for an informative, no-holds barred discussion by three panellists on why women in Hong Kong earn an average of 20 per cent less than men, and how they can act to rectify that pay deficit.
The statistics make for puzzling reading. While the majority of women in Hong Kong - about 55 per cent - have tertiary education, only 44 per cent make it to middle management positions, and just 8 to 9 per cent to board level.
Tracing those statistics back to entry-level positions helps to clarify how women fall behind in the pay rankings as they climb the corporate ladder. For example, in the financial services sector, the pillar of our economy, men and women usually start at the same pay as entry-level analysts.
'But very soon, you'll see the men outpacing the women,' said Farzana Aslam, director at Kintillo Employment Consultants and a member of the law faculty at the University of Hong Kong.
Speaking from the experience of a career spanning more than 30 years in investment banking, hedge funds and asset management, Elspeth Renshaw - a partner at Talent Partners who specialises in senior banking and financial services positions - said the pay differential is not due to some secret agreement among headhunters or human resources departments to pay women less.
