Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women

To encourage the community in organising programmes and activities conducive to women’s development, WoC has launched the Funding Scheme since 2012 and invites women’s groups and NGOs providing women’s services to submit applications under the Funding Scheme.
Some commentators and WoC suggested that the Government should provide more funding to the Funding Scheme and WoC so that more projects organised by women’s groups and NGOs could be funded. In response, starting from 2018-19, the Government’s annual allocation to WoC for its allocation under the Funding Scheme will be doubled from HK$2 million to HK$4 million.

The Government continues to enhance and promote women’s participation in the Government’s advisory and statutory bodies (ASBs) as a way of engaging more women in the policy and decision-making structure, which is an important step towards the empowerment of women. On WoC’s recommendations, the Government announced in its Policy Address 2015 to raise the benchmark of appointing female members to Government ASBs from 30% to 35% to further demonstrate the Government’s commitment in this respect. As at December 2017, the women's participation rate of Government’s ASBs with Government-appointed non-official members was 32.4%.

The Government attaches great importance to gender mainstreaming. In the Policy Address 2015, the Government accepted WoC’s recommendation that, starting from 2015-16, all bureaux and departments were required to refer to the Gender Mainstreaming Checklist (the Checklist) developed by WoC and apply gender mainstreaming in the process of formulating major government policies and initiatives.
To complement the gender mainstreaming initiatives within the Government, WoC assisted the Government in establishing a network of Gender Focal Point (GFP) in 2003. A directorate officer is appointed by each bureau and department to serve as the contact / resource person to assist in raising awareness and understanding of gender related issues, and promote gender mainstreaming initiatives in their respective areas. Considerable progress has been made in expanding the GFP network from DCs to NGOs in welfare sector and listed companies. Further details of the gender mainstreaming initiatives of WoC are set out under Article 3.

WoC has continued to run the CBMP, which is a large-scale, tailor-made learning programme with a focus on women. By January 2018, the CBMP has recorded a cumulative enrolment of over 96 000.

WoC regularly launches public education and publicity programmes to reduce gender prejudice and stereotyping, such as the International Women’s Day, the production of television programmes, large scale Conferences entitled “Bringing Together Women’s Wisdom for a Better Future” and “Unleashing Women’s Potential for All-Round Development” in 2012 and 2017 respectively. Each of the two Conferences attracted over 500 participants from Hong Kong, the Mainland and overseas. Other public education-related activities organised by WoC are detailed at Annex 5B.