Prof Marchetti, Dr Chong, distinguished guests and friends,

Good afternoon. It is my pleasure to welcome you all to this seminar, and an honour for the EOC to be partnering with HKU on this event. In times of unease and uncertainty such as the present, ideals like diversity and inclusion are particularly susceptible to backlash, and we need opportunities like this to keep the spirit of collaboration and dialogue alive.

As some of you may be aware, this event is part of a larger campaign the EOC rolled out last December, a visual storytelling project called “The Way We Are” where we invited marginalised communities to contribute original photographs capturing everyday life as they live it: the good, the bad, the joys and the frustrations. The underlying idea is to provide a platform of self-representation for these communities, whose first-person narratives would help society at large rethink some of the stereotypes and prejudices that remain rampant today.

The campaign eventually gave birth to a collection of over 130 photos from underrepresented women in Hong Kong – carers, migrant workers, non-Chinese youth, new arrivals from mainland China – as well as people facing physical or mental health challenges, and members of the LGBT community. A selection of these works is now being exhibited at Run Run Shaw Tower, HKU while the entire collection is up on the EOC website. I encourage you all to check them out. In fact, two of our contributing photographers, Leeh Ann and Kawal, will be speaking today.

Coming back to this seminar, we chose the theme “Voices of Hong Kong Women” not only to celebrate International Women’s Day, but also to highlight the plurality of women’s experience. There can be a material difference, for instance, between the challenges female domestic workers may encounter and those facing women executives who are trying to break the glass ceiling. From gender and sexuality to race and socio-economic status, identities often intersect and interact with one another in shaping our life experiences. In other words, we cannot adequately address gender inequality without considering its interplay with other forms of inequality.

So what is the EOC’s role in all this? As a statutory body, our primary task is to handle complaints falling within the remit of the anti-discrimination Ordinances in Hong Kong. These laws are based on the notion of protected characteristics, which currently include sex, marital status, pregnancy, breastfeeding, disability, race and, finally, family status, which essentially means the status of being responsible for the care of an immediate family member.

From the perspective of law enforcement, the idea of protected characteristics is a crucial one – we know we have the statutory power to open an investigation as long as an aggrieved person or an authorised representative files a written complaint alleging an unlawful act based on any of these characteristics. And it is worth noting that over the years, a significant portion of the complaints handled by the EOC has consistently been related to pregnancy discrimination in the workplace.

But as I just mentioned, the challenges women face in reality can be more complex and nuanced than what a single identity or characteristic can account for. This is why the EOC actively conducts research and advocates policy change besides enforcing the law. Here, allow me to give two recent examples.

Just last September, we made a submission to the Legislative Council Panel on Welfare Services regarding support measures for carers. While the Government currently offers allowances for low-income carers looking after older adults or people with disabilities, recipients of the Disability Allowance are ineligible to apply because they are not considered to be, and I quote, “fit and capable carers”. But obviously, having a disability does not necessarily mean that one cannot perform caring roles and functions. Indeed, cases of people with disabilities being in a relationship are not uncommon. And because women today continue to disproportionately bear family caring responsibilities, this rigid rule puts female caregivers who have disabilities themselves at an even greater disadvantage. The EOC therefore recommended a review of the restriction, stressing that due regard should be given to the individual capacity and circumstances of applicants.

Another example comes from a study we released in 2019, having surveyed over 14,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students in nine universities in Hong Kong about their experience of sexual harassment. While one in four students reported having been sexual harassed within 12 months prior to the survey, female students had a higher chance of experiencing sexual harassment on campus than male students by 4.5 percentage points; LGBT students were 1.7 times more likely to be sexually harassed than their heterosexual and cisgender counterparts; and students with disabilities twice more likely than those without. This is a clear example of a problem that is often framed as a purely gender-based issue when in fact it involves other factors, other prejudices that had taken root way before these students entered university. That is why, as part of our follow-up actions, we organised a roundtable reviewing the current status of sex education in primary and secondary schools, and relayed feedback from people on the frontlines – teachers, principals, school-sponsoring bodies, social workers and NGOs – to the Education Bureau. A key recommendation is to set up a dedicated curriculum or guideline with a stronger focus on values such as diversity and inclusion.

These are just a few examples of the work the EOC has been doing to address intersectional inequality, a theme that will run through the seminar this afternoon, where you will be hearing from women from a diversity of backgrounds, women who work hard to amplify marginalised voices through art, policy advocacy, community service and other means.

On behalf of the EOC, I would like to express our heartfelt gratitude to our speakers and moderators today, and also thank you all for showing up to support this event. I look forward to the discussions and I wish you will enjoy them too. Thank you very much.