Wednesday, September 3, 2008

It Will Not Work!

With enhanced maternity leave benefits in the pipelines, there is now some concern that women will face discrimination at work due to Singapore’s latest scheme to get more babies.

I wonder what the concern is. To me, there shouldn’t be any concern because without question there will be discrimination. I mean which businessman would want one of his employees to be off work for months to have a baby? For all the strategies of family-friendly workplace, there should be one thing no one can question. Having a baby is a sacrifice. It’s as simple as that. If you want to have a baby, that means certain sacrifices and one of them will be your climb up the career ladder.

Which is why I feel all these ‘have more babies’ schemes are all useless. Educated Singaporean women are not going to have more babies just because the government wants them to. If you studied for 15-20 years to university, would you be willing to give that up just for a baby?

The answer to that is a clear no. It’s not even a question! This ‘enhanced maternity leave’ scheme is dead in the water and unless Singaporean women are willing to put family first and career second, there isn’t a thing the government can do about it.

To me, it’s clear that Singaporean women are not willing to sacrifice their career (and lifestyle) for a family. So forget about all these scheme and save some money for other uses. It will not work!

8 comments:

Anonymous said...

Even though it worked in Sweden. Go figure :)

Anonymous said...

By virtue of being more educated, that means they are not stupid.

I don't see a bright future for Singapore beyond the next 20 years. What would happen to my children?!

I will have kids but not in
Singapore.

Ghost said...

What work in Sweden might not work in Singapore. All those people who believe otherwise has forgotten one important thing. Sweden is nowhere near as money-mad and face-crazy as Singapore

Anonymous said...

A further debate on this topic can be found at:
Singapore Kopitiam
http://forums.delphiforums.com/sunkopitiam/messages/

Anonymous said...

so we should not be concerned because there 'will be' discrimination?? wat is your point?

and I do see employers kind enough to allow female employees to take up part time, after their 12 weeks maternity leaves. I think you are just making lots of sweeping statements here.

Anonymous said...

Women need to depend on employers' kindness?

That's discrimination already ....

I think it's naive to say there's no discrimination.

Ghost said...

I do think we shouldn't be that oncerned of discrimination because...there's not much anyone can do about it. I mean unless there is a complete overhaul of Singapore's employment laws, we will keep on reading about discrimination against their female employees. And I don't see our employment laws changing anytime soon

Anonymous said...

All this because they want women to have children, never mind whether the policy changes will works or not eventually. They just want you to believe them. If you believe them, and think it is good move, but turns out you eventually could not hang on to your job, do you think they will care.

They had this very good answer whenever their policy changes work out differently: Circumstances were different and they had to do what they did then. That was the reason they gave when they decided to reverse the 'stop at two' policy.