30.09.2024 / Video

Address by APEC Secretariat Executive Director Rebecca Fatima Sta Maria to the participants of the IV Eurasian Women's Forum

Thank you again for this kind invitation. Congratulations on successfully bringing together women from across the region to discuss various aspects of women’s participation in the economy, including our role in shaping the agenda on peace and trust, technology, health, sustainable development and cultural diversity.

I'll cover three main topics: a little background; what the data tells us; and our to-do list.

The key to inclusivity is women’s economic empowerment across all dimensions, from education and health care to employment. In APEC, the women’s economic empowerment agenda was first articulated by APEC Leaders in 1996, when they highlighted the need for women to participate fully in the economy. In 1997, Leaders called on us to “take concrete steps to enhance the important role of women in economic development.” At the 1998 Ministerial Meeting on Women, we were called on to ensure that women’s interests and views are heard at all levels of APEC decision-making. However, it was not until 2011 that we formalised a platform for our discussions, establishing the Policy Partnership on Women and the Economy (PPWE). In 2019, in Chile, we agreed on the La Serena Roadmap for Women and Inclusive Growth, which aims to ensure that decades of rhetoric about women’s economic empowerment is translated into an actionable plan whose progress we can track. Yes, women’s economic empowerment has long been on our agenda. But progress has been slow.

To help policymakers and leaders assess the challenges, the APEC Policy Support Unit publishes the APEC Women and the Economy Dashboard every two years to track developments in five key areas: access to capital and assets; access to markets; skills, capacity building and health; leadership, voice and autonomy; and innovation and technology.

Both the La Serena Roadmap Progress Report and the APEC Women and the Economy Report acknowledge that APEC economies have made significant progress in women’s economic participation and inclusion. However, they also highlight that we could do better if we had more reliable, gender-disaggregated data, which is key to more informed, targeted and tailored policy interventions. There are also still significant policy and data gaps, as well as socio-cultural norms that set us back decades.

The second topic I want to touch on is what this data tells us.

The 2023 report shows progress in some areas, but in many areas we are stagnating. Take access to credit, for example. The good news is that more women in the region have formal financial and mobile money accounts, and we are seeing the rise of digital financial services and online platforms. However, in 12 APEC economies, gender discrimination in access to credit is not illegal.

The 2023 report informs us that 18 APEC economies prohibit gender discrimination in employment – good news – and that 17 member economies, including Russia, have laws that punish or prevent the dismissal of pregnant women. Russia also requires that women return to an equivalent position after maternity leave.

While the gender pay gap persists, I am pleased to note that Russia is among 11 countries with laws on equal pay for women and men for work of equal value.

Available data show that women spend, on average, almost three times as much time as men on unpaid care work. We need more data, not only to quantify the impact of this on productivity, but also to insist on including unpaid care work in our measures of economic growth.

To navigate and participate in this digital era, it is necessary to improve digital skills. However, in APEC, women are a minority in STEM fields, R&D, research and innovation. Importantly, the share of women in these fields has remained below 35% for two decades. The underrepresentation of women in leadership positions remains glaring in both the public and private sectors. In 2022, women held only 27% of ministerial and leadership positions in APEC parliaments.

Finally, let me tell you what we should add to our to-do list:

1. Voice and Advocacy: Those of us in positions of influence must be the voice of the voiceless. For example, we must all speak up about the problem of unpaid care work. The focus should be on economic and productive growth if care work is to be seen as an important economic factor, capable of increasing GDP by 10-39%. Sound public policy is about sound economics.
2. Working with international organizations to ensure policy coherence and advance gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in the global trading system. For example, the WTO has an Informal Working Group on Trade and Gender that works to develop trade policies that take into account the specific needs and concerns of women, eliminate gender bias in trade rules, and promote women’s participation in trade negotiations. We all need to ensure that our governments fully engage in this process to advance progress in this area.
3. Data collection and analysis: We need to collect and analyse sex-disaggregated data to understand the impact of policies and interventions on women and to make evidence-based policy decisions. In terms of technology, we need to ensure that data and AI-related algorithms do not inadvertently reinforce gender biases.
4. Inclusive Business: We must promote the integration of women-owned businesses into the global economy through partnerships, networks, capacity building, technology deployment and market access.
5. And finally, representation : According to the World Economic Forum's 2023 Global Gender Gap Report, which covers 102 countries, at the current rate of progress, it will take 162 years to close the gender gap in political empowerment.

What I have said here today is not new. The problems remain. Our work is far from complete. I hope that some of the issues I have raised will be reflected in your discussions in this Forum. Thank you for your attention.