The Philippines ranked first overall in gender diversity from among 10 Asian countries, having the most number of female industry leaders in the region and the smallest gap in pay between women and men.
The country also had the highest female representation in senior leadership roles, data from the Gender Diversity Benchmark for Asia report showed.
The GDBA, developed through a partnership between Hong Kong-based Community Business and global advisory firm Willis Towers Watson, analyzes data from close to 4.8 million employees in more than 3,600 companies from the Philippines, China, Taiwan, Hong Kong, India, Singapore, Malaysia, South Korea, Japan, and Indonesia.
Countries were ranked across the key metrics of women representation in the total workforce, women representation at senior level, and the pay gap, with the Philippines emerging with the best diversity performance by averaging the rankings of the three indicators.
This was the first time the Philippines was covered by the GDBA, now on its fifth edition.
Women were paid less than men by at least 10 percent across the 10 markets surveyed, which translates to women being paid at 90 cents or less for every dollar that a man earns. The Philippines has the lowest pay gap at 10.2 percent, followed by Indonesia at 17.9 percent. Japan has the largest pay gap at 26.8 percent in terms of total compensation.
Disparity in the pay gap, according to the report, may be attributed to women’s representation across job levels, with more at the junior level and underrepresented at the senior level.
In terms of women representation in the total workforce, Malaysia ranked first at 58.1 percent, followed closely by the Philippines at 56 percent.
These scores were in stark contrast to the lowest-ranked countries Indonesia and South Korea (both at 39.6 percent), Japan (33.8 percent) and India (20.8 percent).
The Philippines led the region in the representation of women in senior leadership roles at 33 percent, followed by Malaysia (26.7 percent) and Hong Kong (24.7 percent).
The GDBA also looked at the “leaking pipeline” or the rate of decline of women participation from one level to another. Malaysia scored the lowest leakage from junior to mid-level at 4.9 percent, while the Philippines scored the lowest leakage from mid-level to senior level at 2.2 percent.
The leakage, the report said, may be attributed to cultural biases that hinder women’s career advancement, such as playing a bigger role in domestic duties which coincides with a later phase in life and the opportunity to take on more senior roles at the workplace.
While the Philippines continued to rank highly across the three metrics considered by the study—representation in the total workforce, representation at the senior level, and pay gap—gender imbalance persists in terms of organizational functions.
Women in the Philippines are heavily represented in human resources (71 percent) and finance (69 percent) but outnumbered in IT (28 percent).
The representation of women in the workforce also declines with age. Women in the Philippines make up more than half of the total workforce from ages 20 to 39, and the percentages steadily decline from age 40 onward. According to the report, this may be attributed to care for the elderly, which is integral to Filipino culture.
“The results of the 2019 GDBA are instructive for companies in the Philippines, even as the country continues to rank high on gender equality metrics,” said Tes Veloso, Manila site officer and senior director of Thomson Reuters.