Dear Members and Friends

Tomorrow, we will all mark International Women’s Day when we celebrate the half of humankind who enable our lives and who are every bit as able, ambitious, brilliant, capable and imperfect as any man.

We can all too easily forget women have only attained the right to vote in many so-called developed countries in the last 100 years. We can all too often forget women have been oppressed since the beginning of time by men who have bought and sold them into slavery, treated them as chattels to abuse and dispose of as they will and denied them an education. We should not forget all of these ills are still happening across our world today. Why? Because of pernicious male insecurity and, all too often, because of time-honoured practices.

The solutions to all these challenges are people-centric governance and leadership. People-centric governance enables every human being to excel. We are lucky to have such a system in Singapore. We are not perfect by any means. But we have many of the fundamentals right. To sustain them, we need leadership from more secure men to mentor and coach more women at work. We need more senior women to mentor more women at work and we need more women on company Boards, now.

As you celebrate International Women’s Day tomorrow, reflect on what action you can take to make a positive contribution to half the sky.

Yours faithfully
Victor Mills
Chief Executive