Break tradition and end the bias against women

The dynamic countries of Southeast Asia can boast rising wealth, rising confidence and rising leadership. Yet, Asia's breathtaking economic growth and demographic strength are intertwined with inequality, poverty, environmental degradation, political instability, and other threats.

To address the region's challenges women's contributions are needed more than ever. Unfortunately, few women make it to the top as leaders in Asia, and social norms continue to undervalue girls and women, as evidenced in ongoing sex selection that results in approximately 1.3 million girls not being born per year in China and India alone.

But not all the news is bad. Women have contributed as well as benefited to some degree from Asia's economic development. Rising prosperity has narrowed the gender gap in many countries.

As the World Economic Forum's 2011 Global Gender Gap Report noted, women's health, life expectancy, educational attainment, economic opportunities and political empowerment have all improved. This means that the women of Asia will be able to leverage growing personal strengths as well as increasing structural opportunities for future leadership.

But cultural and entrenched social norms remain the most intractable obstacles for women's leadership in Asia.

From the very start, girls in Asia face significant obstacles to fulfilling their potential, in general, and their potential for leadership, in particular.

A broad campaign is needed to educate people and push for change in the valuation and perception of girls and women. This includes perceiving girls to be as valuable as boys; viewing women as having roughly similar abilities and potential to lead as men; and openness to gender roles that involve women leading outside the home and men doing more in the home. These shifts will give women more equal voice and agency in the home and in society at large, and facilitate their role as leaders.

However, deeply ingrained values are not easy to change. Education for men, women and youth is only part of the equation. Affirmative action programs can expedite women's representation in leadership, but they must be given time to affect social norms. For example, in India, exposure over time to female leaders at the local level eventually reduces bias and boosts the aspirations and educational achievement of young women. Governments, particularly China and India, can also increase campaigns to end sex selection against baby girls. More laws, and better implementation of the law, are needed to reduce domestic violence against women and to enhance women's bargaining power through greater property ownership, access to legal and other support services, and ability to leave marriage. In Pakistan and Indonesia, encouraging examples show how partnerships among government, police, women's groups, paralegals and non-government organizations work together to strengthen women's voice and agency, and thus their potential to contribute more fully to society.

Women feature heavily in two spheres of economic activity in Asia: agriculture and entrepreneurship. Here, the work tends to be particularly low in productivity and scale and women are often pressed into such jobs because of poverty, unemployment, and emergency needs. These sectors, however, represent an opportunity to nurture female leadership, especially at local levels. Governments can help through policies that provide women in these sectors greater access to capital, skills training, for example in budgeting and financial planning, technology and networks.

At present, many Asian countries still do not take the most pragmatic approach toward their women, leaning more on old cultural, traditional, and social norms. It is high time to change this. It will not only benefit women, but society at large and Asia as a whole.

Astrid S. Tuminez is the vice-dean (Research) of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore. Vishakha N. Desai is president of Asia Society.