Written by Tejaswi Chunduri
Impaakt is a crowd-sourced, collaborative platform that relies on collective intelligence to produce high-quality impact analyses and scores available to all of us, for free.
Empowering women uplifts the social and financial prospects of families, communities, and countries. Gender discrimination/harassment, wage gap, less encouragement for growth, and work-life balance are barriers for women in the workforce. Gender balance is defined as 40-60% representation of either gender. Globally, women earn less than men. In 2020, women earned 77% of what men earned.
In the real estate industry in 2019, women occupied 22% of the board of directors (BOD) seats, 30% of the senior leadership roles, and 42% of the middle-management roles. In China, women made up 43.7% of the workforce.
Kerry Properties Ltd (KPL) is a real estate group focused on Mainland China and Hongkong. As of 2019, Kerry had an employee base of 3,745, of which 1,389 (37%) were women. 50% (59 of 119) of the management positions are taken up by women, whereas 43% (149 of 345) managerial positions are occupied by women. Also, 38% (311 of 826) of the new hires were women. Though KPL has a better representation of women employees at senior levels, the company fails in being gender balanced in its overall workforce.
In 2019, the ratio of basic salary and remuneration of female to male employees in Hong Kong was 1:0.82 (1:1.24 in 2018). In the Mainland, the ratio was 1:0.996 (1:0.93 in 2018). As of availing the parental leaves scheme, only 2 men (of 957 entitled) and 4 women (of 494 entitled) in Hongkong and 58 women (of 799 entitled) and zero men (of 1,350 entitled) in the Mainland availed them.
KPL supports its employees in achieving work-life balance by providing caregiver and parental leaves, supportive facilities for breastfeeding, conducting family days, internship programs for employee’s kids, amongst others.
Women’s representation in KPL’s overall workforce is at 37%, but 50% in management and 43% in managerial positions. Although it has almost closed its pay gap, KPL must adopt measures to achieve workforce gender balance.
