By: Tisa Ng
First published: 19 Aug 04, TODAY

With little fanfare, Singapore now has two women in national leadership as Ministers of State, and a third in local government as one of the five mayors.

The absence of excitement can be read as a sign of maturity. Women in top positions are no longer deemed newsworthy by virtue of their rarity value.

In accordance with the well-established principle of meritocracy, it is the capability of the individual that matters, not the gender.

Since there are women capable of doing the job, then their getting it should be a matter of course. Yet, despite almost 40 years of close-to-equal opportunity in education, and the steady increase in workforce participation, women remain a small minority in leadership positions.

The high profile of the few women who are there hides the fact that their male counterparts remain far more numerous.

Something seems to be holding back the advancement of women. And that stumbling block seems to revolve around the issue of maternity.

There are two interrelated attitudes at play.

The first is to place motherhood on a pedestal, to hold it sacred and wondrous and powerful, and therefore, all that any woman would want for complete satisfaction and meaning in life.

The second is that procreation is an inconvenience which interrupts economically-productive work.

Employers do not like it, but have to put up with it. It interrupts women's career advancement and contributes to the gender wage gap.

Both ascribe primacy to a single biological function in the female, and circumscribe her potential in other domains.

Neither acknowledges that while it may take the male partner no more than a few minutes and the female rather longer to produce an offspring, it is a joint enterprise.

There is implicit denial of the fact that shared rewards and responsibilities of parenthood go far beyond insemination, pregnancy and delivery, and is a life-long affair. It is as unfair to under-rate the father's role as it is to overstate the mother's.

Flattery notwithstanding, pedestals are dangerous and any woman accepts a position on one at her own peril.

By definition, they are narrow spaces with little room for movement - from which it is all too easy to fall. Much better to be on level ground to access the entire playing field.

As for the attitude which regards maternity as an inconvenient interruption to the business of business, this could be at least one of the root causes of our low birth rate.

We should not be surprised that economic imperatives guide personal choices as well as national policies.

As long as these attitudes prevail, any increase in maternity leave will raise concerns about possible prejudice against women in the workforce.

Work life strategies will be counted as a deterrent to unenlightened employers, who continue to be part of the problem. As part of the solution, a fundamental revision of the attitudes towards parenting will be required.

One expression of such a change in attitude would be paternity leave that goes beyond taking a few days to bond with the infant and support the nursing mother.

Women can go back to work when they are ready, while the father takes the next nine months or more to take primary responsibility for the home and childcare. Give men, as well as women, the options available in flexible work arrangements to look after their children.

This is already being done in Scandinavian countries, which have successfully reversed declining fertility. And where women's contributions to national leadership is truly a matter of course.

The writer is a former president of the Association of Women for Action and Research (Aware). Do you have a view on this comment? If so, e-mail Today at news@newstoday.com.sg.