WOMEN are missing across Asia Inc.

Legacy systems in the region’s corporations lead to an unnatural order of things: talent pools that are initially filled with equal distributions of men and women evaporate lopsidedly as responsibilities and seniority increase. As a result we see distortions in representation that are more pronounced than in other parts of the world: only 4 per cent of CEOs, 5 per cent of board chairs and 10 per cent of CFOs across Asia are women. (This skew is driven by Japan: in the region’s second largest economy, less than 1 per cent of CEOs are women.) A gender ratio that starts at 1:1 mutates until it reaches the corner office, where men outnumber women 24:1. Mother Nature would be puzzled.

Well documented is the problem of gender diversity. And well catalogued are the benefits of greater diversity: higher growth and higher returns on capital, over time leading to more rapid accretion of stakeholder value. Less chronicled are specific actions companies can take to develop, retain and promote women. At M&G, we focus on actionable ESG initiatives when engaging with companies, and it is in the area of diversity that we have begun to have the most frequent and fruitful conversations. What follow are prescriptive policies that we present to companies across the region; some of these are being adopted, others are being considered. We believe all can effect positive changes.

This, the Year of the Rabbit, symbolised by longevity and prosperity, is ideal for investing in initiatives that lead to companies that endure and employees who thrive. Directives that lead to greater equilibrium in the yin and yang of women and the executive office are the perfect place to start.

At home in the office

The path from entry-level positions to the corner office is more encumbered for women than it is for men. Corporations should remove many obstacles along the way. Effective policies to ensure that women feel supported and incentivised at work can include the following:

Casting a wide net for senior roles in revenue-generating units: Companies across the region proudly cite statistics of women at the heads of “XR” (HR, IR, PR), ESG and marketing divisions. Gender-blind recruitment into engineering, product design and geographic leadership roles is one way to increase diversity at the top. Matching candidates’ experience and potential with job requirements should drive interviews, not their genders. (When being evaluated for a job, no woman should wonder about her interviewer, “Would you ask a man that?”)

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Pay based on productivity and value-added, not based on face time and personal relationships: Given women’s responsibilities (chosen or not) outside the office, often they are unable to allocate the same time to being physically present in the office that men are. (More on this below.) A compensation policy based only on the impacts to profitable growth and a healthy culture is redistributive and provides greater incentives to succeed.

Flexibility with leave: From my personal observation, men enter and leave the workforce in generally the same cycle of their lives. From their early-20s to their late-50s, neither their bodies nor their domestic responsibilities evolve. For women, the opposite is true: the three-plus decades between college graduation and retirement bring changes that men do not have to manage. Corporations should incorporate scheduling flexibility and personal leave policies that reflect that. Extra hours and days granted for menstrual leave, perimenopause and menopause leave, miscarriages, fertility treatments and nursing infants (etc) all help women.

Structured maternity leave (and re-integration) and “take it or leave it” paternity leave for fathers: Gender pay gaps are generally narrow—until a woman has her first child. Having policies in place for women to take full maternity leave and for re-entering the workplace – without the anxiety of job security—further increases the presence of women in the senior rungs. For instance, reduce targets for women who are about to take (or have recently taken) maternity leave. Furthermore, incentivising men to take paternity leave would serve to equalise responsibilities at home and opportunities in the workplace.

Physical and psychological safety: swift, certain and severe consequences for harassment and unwanted advances allow women to know the office for what it is: a place of work.

Referred pain

In medicine, the term “referred pain” is used to describe a problem in one area of the body whose source is actually in a different part of the body. In the same manner, if a woman isn’t able to maximise her potential in the office, often the problem isn’t there: it’s at home.

Most women’s days begin long before they reach the office – and end long after they return. Gender pay gaps are compounded by grossly unequal splits in unpaid labour and “emotional” labour (ie, not only the hours allocated to domestic chores, but also the time spent thinking about and planning for those tasks). Before reaching the office, women’s work has long begun: they have already spent time in the morning being chefs and teachers and chauffeurs and nurses. After coming home, again they are expected to be teachers and doctors, drivers and cooks, friends and lovers – while work life seeps into home life and the preparations for the next business day begin. Statistics from Asia highlight extreme disparities in domestic responsibilities: in South Asia, only 30 minutes per day of men’s time is allocated to unpaid labour at home; women’s contributions are measured in hours. The numbers from other parts of Asia are less skewed, but in most countries only marginally so. Men across the region seem to assume they have only one job; women know they have many. The home-office duality is more taxing on women than it is on men.

Corporations can play a role in addressing this imbalance. Subsidies for childcare, eldercare and domestic help would have multiplier effects on tangible contributions made – and mental health saved. Reducing the financial and time thievery of women’s unpaid labour at home would allow them to succeed more in the office.

Effective subsidies can take different forms, and this is an area in which governments can collaborate with corporations to foster diversity. In Singapore, where immigration policies provide opportunities for migrants to offer domestic services at affordable wages, women’s workforce participation rates (and C-suite representation rates) are the highest in Asia. Japan provides a contrast: a nation that has witnessed little immigration policy change is unable to provide domestic care support to its women – as a result, Japanese women are severely under-represented in the workforce in general and in the C-suite in particular.

If the corporate world were to re-design its systems for recruiting, developing, retaining and promoting women, it’s unlikely that it would implement those we see today. We must put in place the systems that put more women in their place: the C-suite.

Vikas Pershad is portfolio manager at M&G Investments