A Seat at the Table

As the demand for tech talent grows, so does the need for inclusivity. SG Women in Tech chairperson Ong Chen Hui shares more about the efforts being made towards empowering women in the industry and setting them up for success

- By Nafeesa Saini

Singapore has seen significant progress in recent years when it comes to fostering diversity and inclusivity in the workforce. Structural reforms, policy initiatives, and a cultural shift towards gender equity have reshaped professional trajectories, enabling more women to enter and thrive in fields that were once male-dominated. A testament to this is Singapore’s ranking on the latest United Nations Gender Inequality Index released in March last year: eighth worldwide and first in the Asia-Pacific region for having a low level of gender inequality.

Furthermore, according to the Ministry of Social and Family Development’s Progress on Singapore Women’s Development 2024 report, more women have assumed leadership roles in the workplace, taking on 46.7 per cent of professional, managerial, executive and technician positions in 2023, up from 42.3 per cent in 2013. The same report also notes an increase in women’s representation in the fields of science, technology, engineering and maths, from 28.8 per cent in 2013 to 34.3 per cent in 2023.

Beyond these statistics are personal stories that illustrate the realities of women in tech. For Ong Chen Hui, chairperson of SG Women in Tech (SGWIT), an initiative by the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA), this progress is deeply personal. “I started my career conducting R&D in cybersecurity, where at one point, I was the only woman in a lab of 29,” she shares. “There are challenges that sometimes have nothing to do with our skill sets or technical know-how. This has shaped how I work and how I lead.”

Now the assistant chief executive of the BizTech Group at IMDA, Ong is a driving force of the nation’s digital transformation. She has led initiatives such as the Future Communications Research and Development Programme to advance 6G research, the Digital Trust Centre to develop trust technologies, and the 5G Innovation Programme to accelerate industry adoption of next-generation connectivity.