Advancing workplace gender equality (WGE) improves business profitability and growth, leading to stronger economies. Efforts to encourage, promote and achieve WGE in South East Asian businesses is increasing, but at a slow pace. This research aims to investigate the progress of WGE across 38 businesses in four South East Asian countries (Indonesia, the Philippines, Myanmar and Vietnam). These 38 businesses are all members of a Business Coalition for Workplace Gender Equality, which means they are likely to have better WGE initiatives than the average firm in these four countries.
The report explores WGE by researching three focus areas; the impact of leadership training opportunities on promotional outcomes of men and women; the role of strong policy frameworks that prohibit discrimination in recruitment and promotion on women’s career outcomes; and the influences of any formal or informal cultural biases or gender stereotypes on decisions regarding promotion, recruitment and retention that businesses need to understand and incorporate in order to address any gender inequalities at work. The methodology to address these focus areas includes a secondary analysis of Investing in Women’s qualitative and quantitative data on these businesses.
