The COVID-19 pandemic has exposed and exacerbated a wide range of inequalities. If leaders are serious about “building back better,” policies to overcome the systemic forces that underlie them must form the heart of their agendas.One such divide is the gender gap.

A 2019 survey which included five ASEAN member states – Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines – found that Indonesia has come in worst in the region for women representation in management.

ASEAN member states have a unique opportunity to meaningfully address the digital gender divide through their COVID-19 recovery plans.

While the COVID-19 crisis has upended our way of living and working, its chaos has brought with it some clarity.

"If you teach a man to farm, his family will eat. If you teach a woman to farm, the whole community will eat." This quote highlights the fact that closing the gender gap in agriculture would not only produce more food but also provide long-term benefits for farming families and their communities.An empirical study in the Springer Journal titled, Gender in Agriculture reveals that women lack access to agricultural inputs, training, information and marketing services.

The recent Gender Gap Report 2020 released by the World Economic Forum (WEF) ranked Philippines 16th globally. The country boasts the smallest gender gap in Asia by far, even surpassing first world nations like Japan, Australia, Canada, and Switzerland. Among the four dimensions in which the report was based on, the Philippines performed strongly in three of them. In the Economic Participation and Opportunity dimension, 80 percent of the gender gap has been closed.

In 2016, the International Labour Organisation (ILO) reported that women made up half of all documented migrant workers in ASEAN. These women are normally employed in the care industry and most often are underpaid and certainly undervalued. The World Economic Forum (WEF) reported that one of the significant reasons why the gender gap remains large is because care in most countries almost always fall on the woman. It does not however, mention the perceived i

While Malaysia’s male politicians continue to squabble over power, all the women seem to be left with are breadcrumbs.Recently, the World Economic Forum (WEF) released its 2020 Global Gender Gap Report. While it was unsurprising that Nordic countries like Iceland, Norway, Finland, and Sweden were the top performers, some ASEAN countries like the Philippines – which managed to secure the 16th spot out of 153 countries – didn’t do too shabby either.

Indonesia has come in worst in ASEAN for women representation in management and didn’t do very well as far as women in board positions goes either. This was according to a survey which included five of the bloc’s members (Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines). Recently, the Credit Suisse Research Institute (CSRI) released results of its third CS Gender 3000 report.