Penghargaan UN Women 2020 Asia-Pacific WEPs:
Temui Pemenang Regional
MALAYSIA
Kami sangat senang mengumumkan pemenang Penghargaan WEPs UN Women 2020 Asia-Pasifik Asia-Pasifik yang pertama kalinya!
Selamat kepada semua pemenang yang telah berkomitmen untuk memajukan kesetaraan gender dan pemberdayaan ekonomi perempuan. Para juara gender dari berbagai negara, sektor, dan bidang ini masing-masing diakui atas Komitmen Kepemimpinan, Kepemimpinan Pemuda, Tempat Kerja yang Inklusif Gender, Pasar Responsif Gender, Keterlibatan Komunitas dan Industri, dan Aksi COVID-19 mereka yang luar biasa.
Pemenang
Professor Elizabeth Lee Fuh Yen, Chief Executive Officer at Sunway Education Group (SEG), is recognized both locally and internationally for her contributions to women’s empowerment and educational causes. Notably, her doctorate by Victoria University has recognized her role as a distinguished educator on issues specific to women’s education. Under Elizabeth’s leadership, SEG has developed into a dynamic group of 17 institutions, including Sunway University, College, and International School. Currently, SEG empowers 30,000 students, of which 56% are female.
In 1992, Sunway College’s top management consisted of 90% male and 10% female leaders, Elizabeth as the only female manager represented. Through Elizabeth’s active leadership in gender equality and advocacy of women’s empowerment in the workplace, women hold six out of the ten senior-most management positions as of 2020. 58% of SEG’s managerial roles are led by women and over 65% of SEG’s workforce are women. Elizabeth’s advocacy for women’s active role in the workplace has led to several advancements at SEG, including lactation rooms, gender-inclusive hiring practices, flexible work arrangements, and sexual harassment policies.
To further strengthen SEG’s commitment to gender equality, marketing and promotional materials continue to highlight gender equality and inclusivity.
Toh Yin Li, Co-Founder of Women at Maxis, has spearheaded dialogue and initiatives on gender equality at Maxis. What started as lunch conversations between eight young women employees on issues from career progression to nursing facilities, progressed into Maxis’ resource group, Women at Maxis, with now more than 300active members and engagement with more than 1,000 employees through the Group’s events.
Toh Yin Li led collaborations with Lean In Malaysia to implement the Lean In Framework on Circles, which spurred the formation of a focus group of 10-15 women and men employees to provide peer support through open dialogue on gender equality. Toh Yin Li continues to make an active effort to ensure top-down engagement on gender equality.
With the formation of Women at Maxis, representation of women in management has increased to 38% in 2020 from 32% previously. Additionally, the Group has successfully established an Inclusion and Diversity Department to continue engagement on gender equality. Recognized for her efforts, Toh Yin Li was awarded the Divisional Spot Award at Maxis in 2020.
Intel has surpassed their RISE 2030 Inclusive Goals; women represent over 40% of technical roles at Intel and are on track to double the number of women in leadership by 2030.
CnetG Asia co-founded Malaysia Women in Energy – driving the development of Recruitment, Promotion, and Retention Best Practices accepted by the Minister of Science, Energy, and Technology in 2018 and 11 CEOs representing energy companies in Malaysia. Other key initiatives launched include an APAC wide study on ‘Barriers Women Leaders Face’ in collaboration with CCL and roundtable discussions held with Chambers of Commerce to promote dialogue on women’s advancement in the workplace.
In the past decade, Goal has reached more than 646,000 girls and over 56,000 girls and young women in 2020.
GoodKids Malaysia believes it takes a village to address the systemic challenges in Malaysia’s marginalized communities and are identifying partners to advance their content and bridge communication gaps with beneficiaries.
Runner Up Pertama
Dr. Leong Wai Yie, Chair of IET Malaysia and IET Industry 4.0 Technical Network, is an active advocator of EDI (Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion) in the discipline of engineering. Women engineers lack representation and visibility, which challenges their opportunities to advance professionally and demonstrate their technical expertise. As the Vice President of the Institution of Engineers Malaysia and Women in Engineering Committee of the World Federation of Engineering Organizations (WFEO), Dr. Wai Yie has engaged with international audiences to promote EDI and has actively facilitated exchanges specific to women’s empowerment in the ASEAN engineering community.
In response to the many barriers ASEAN women in engineering face, Dr. Wai Yie successfully developed an online communications strategy in collaboration with IET Malaysia Networks, resulting in over 100 webinars, workshops, and conferences to engage with women engineers and to promote active collaboration. As the Taskforce Lead for EDI, Dr. Wai Yie and her team have formalised the EDI Charter for WFEO, in addition to proposing to the Government of Malaysia to raise the benchmark for women’s participation in top management to 30%.
Dr. Wai Yie continues to impact women issues specific to engineering through an EDI-lens, in collaboration with international organizations including UNESCO and UN Women.
Fatin Fatihah Zahari, Cloud Adoption Engineer at Microsoft Malaysia, is an active advocator of gender equality and has intentionally leveraged her skills to encourage representation of minority groups within the organization and the wider technology industry. Fatin has led women empowerment initiatives at Microsoft as a Developer Community Champion, a Diversity, Inclusion & Allyship Co-Lead, Accessibility Co-Lead, and her latest involvement, AI Lead of Code Without Barriers program.
Learning from previous initiatives, Fatin crafted the AI Lab under the Code Without Barriers program that helps women across various communities to upskill and reskill according to updated cloud computing requirements. This includes demos and case studies at events in collaboration with universities, enterprises, and government agencies in Malaysia. Currently, over 100,000 individuals participate in Microsoft outreach programs in Asia. From a small town herself, Fatin aims to reach women in marginalized communities through other AI skilling initiatives and achieve Microsoft Malaysia’s target of doubling outreach numbers in a two-year period.
Most recently, Fatin spearheaded the first Women in AI Malaysia Summit in September 2021, where Fatin aimed to improve internal awareness at Microsoft on allyship in the tech industry and spearheading diversity in innovation as the end goal.
An indicator of success includes Nestle Malaysia’s Employee Engagement Survey which showed great improvement on how the organization has enabled employees to balance their work and personal life (e.g., increase in scoring from 66% (2016) to 81% (2020)).
Deloitte GROW is supported by more than 15 Deloitte participants from ASEAN as the program management team, program facilitators, business coaches/mentors, as well as 10 to 15 people from Barry Callebaut, and the teachers and community members. A key result of GROW includes business coaching; many youth participants found business coaching to be helpful, and some grew their revenue by 400%.
Yuki Aizawa, Co-Founder of RINNE Technologies, is an advocate for gender equality and promoter of women in leadership in the technology industry. Recognizing the lack of representation of women in technology, particularly in leadership, Yuki embodies three core principles at RINNE: 1) inclusion; strengthening the role of women in the technology sector by promoting financial inclusion of marginalised individuals and MSME-s, 2) innovation; addressing economic inefficiencies and supporting digitalization efforts, and 3) sustainability; promoting sustainable solutions within RINNE’s business model.
RINNE has launched specific IT solutions to aid in workflow automation, which has enabled digitalization and empowered women who were traditionally excluded from the workforce to engage in remote work at home. This includes increased representation of women hired for remote IT roles through RINNE, in addition to the introduction of gender-inclusive hiring practices and workplace policies to promote and retain women talent. Other IT solutions specific to sustainability and inclusion include RINNE’s project specific to underserved and marginalized segments of Malaysia’s population and the blue ocean sector.
Yuki has led in advancing RINNE’s projects through active engagement with investors interested in women’s empowerment, in addition to initiating dialogue with stakeholders at government agencies and associations to promote partnerships and collaboration specific to women’s empowerment.
2nd Runners Up
Tunku Rozita Malek has been the Independent Director on the Board of Aberdeen Standard Islamic Investments (Malaysia) Sdn Bhd, a global Shariah-based asset management company since 2011. She is also a member of the 30% Club, a global business-led campaign focused on building an ecosystem of partners towards a common goal – the promotion of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DE&I). Tunku is also a member of ICDM (Institute of Corporate Directors Malaysia), a professional institution dedicated to enhancing the professionalism and effectiveness of corporate directors in Malaysia spearheaded by the Securities Commission Malaysia and supported by Bank Negara Malaysia, Bursa Malaysia, and the Capital Market Development Fund.
With the supervision of Tunku and other board members, the firm has set gender targets in place since 2016 and achieved these in 2020. For the percentage of women in roles at the board and senior leadership level, both targets were 33%. The firm reached 45% at board level and 37% fo senior leadership roles as of December 2020. From January 2021, the firm has set new targets that build on their progress and restate the firm’s ongoing commitment to improving diversity.
Tunku recognizes that making progress in diversity and inclusion is critical for the long-term sustainability of companies and economic growth. The firm is committed to pushing forward progress in operations and promoting diversity and inclusion through the firm’s investment activities.
To date, there are approximately 127 mothers in Digi who have benefitted from this policy. On return to work, women employees are empowered to take on new opportunities and receive support from the organization to transition into work smoothly. In 2020, Digi was the only Malaysian company recognized under the Top 50 companies in Refinitiv’s Diversity and Inclusion (D&I) Index. Most recently, Digi was listed for the first time in the Bloomberg 2021 Gender Equality Index (GEI). These recognitions demonstrate Digi’s long-standing commitment to women’s empowerment in the workplace through sustainable solutions and policies.
For more than 15 years, Forest Interactive has consistently attracted a diverse set of applicants which has paved the way for the organization to expand on a much larger scale. To promote a gender-inclusive workplace, Forest Interactive begins with their talent acquisition process; job descriptions are updated to reflect gender-neutral language and procedures for standardized interviews are practiced limiting unconscious bias. To ensure women and gender-nonconforming individuals are empowered in the workplace, employee-led committees, clubs, and celebrations are encouraged to ensure everyone’s voice is included. In terms of career progression, the organization empowers women to lead projects, participate in personal and career development workshops, and integrate structured arrangements to ensure professional progress toward KPIs.
Prisca Florence Wong, Founder and Producer, is a champion of gender inclusivity at Threemendous Films. Recognizing the lack of support for and representation of women in the film industry, Prisca empowers all employees at Threemendous Films through gender-inclusive practices such as maternity leave (and paternity leave), insurance policies, flexible working options, in addition to ensuring a safe working environment for open dialogue on violence, harassment, and sexual harassment faced in the industry.
As a women-led and all-women run film company, Prisca and her team promote and support awareness about gender equality and women’s empowerment the best way they know how to – through media. Prisca recognizes the power and influence of media and aims to craft and produce content that does not condone gender discrimination, gender bias, or negative gender stereotypes.
Beyond content production, Prisca believes in the importance of strengthening bonds and relationships with other women-owned businesses. Threemendous Films actively engages with other women to craft women-related stories in addition to encouraging women to lead in technical roles which is rare in Malaysia.
*The UN Women Asia-Pacific WEPs Awards represents recognition of exemplary company efforts for gender equality and is limited to a designated category and a specific location and time period. Awarded organizations, alongside their products and services, receiving awards are not endorsed or affiliated with UN Women or WeEmpowerAsia and being recognized as an Awardee does not constitute a partnership. Claims, statements, or endorsements made by awardees are solely those of the individual or organization and do not represent official policies or positions of UN Women.