Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia
Almost a month separates the International Day of Women and Girls in Science on 11 February and the International Women’s Day on 8 March, but the two are getting increasingly related, if not in time at least in the achievements they want to mark. The former was established in 2015 by the United Nations (UN) General Assembly to encourage more girls and women to pursue studies and careers in science and technology.
ASEAN is set to become the world’s fourth largest economy by 2030, and it is a transition that will be championed by an increasingly tech-savvy younger population which is rapidly rising up the socio-economic ladder. ASEAN’s digital economy – a collective term for all economic transactions that occur online – will progress in hand with this, and is expected to expand 6.4 times from US$31 billion in 2015 to US$197 billion by 2025 according to the Economic Research Institute for ASEAN
In Indonesia, heart-breaking stories about health care workers who died as a result of the COVID-19 outbreak started appearing in newspapers within weeks of the first diagnosed cases in the country. Doctors, nurses and other frontline health workers without appropriate personal protective equipment (PPE) were falling gravely ill and in far too many cases, dying. Similar stories appeared across many other ASEAN member states.
ASEAN is set to become the world’s fourth largest economy by 2030, and it is a transition that will be championed by an increasingly tech-savvy younger population which is rapidly rising up the socio-economic ladder.