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It is not too unusual to see a man in Singapore dating or marrying a woman who earns more than he does. There is also an increasing number of men who work from home and take care of the children while their wives hold higher-paying, full-time jobs outside the home. To many, these are signs of the changes that have come to this affluent state in the past two decades. Indeed, Singaporean women have come a long way since the 1980s. They have made great strides in professions that have traditionally been dominated by men, ranging from business to information technology, entrepreneurship, life sciences, and the media. Changes have also been made to eliminate forms of gender discrimination that existed in Singapore. These include laws against family violence and the commitment by the government to an international declaration of equality when it signed the United Nations Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women in 1995. However there are still a number of laws and policies that explicitly differentiate between men and women. The Singapore Constitution declares in Article 12 that “…shall be no discrimination against citizens of Singapore on the grounds of religion, race, descent or place of birth…” It is silent on the area of gender discrimination. This article breaches the social contract that was made more than 40 years ago when the People’s Action Party (PAP) promised voters that “all people will have equal rights and opportunities, irrespective of sex, race and religion.” The absence of clear and specific protection against gender-based discrimination has opened the way for the enactment of gender-discrimination policies. Some discriminatory policies that remain standing include: the birthright of children born outside of Singapore to Singaporean mothers and foreign fathers, medical benefits for women in the civil service and the maintenance order in the Women’s Charter, amongst many others. For the purpose of this essay, I will focus on the medical benefits policy in the civil service. According to this particular human resource policy, dependants of male civil servants can claim up to 60 per cent of their medical costs, but dependants of female civil servants cannot. Provisions are made for divorced or widowed women, and those whose husbands are seriously ill.
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