Matrimonial Assets and Empowerment : Do Men have Rights in Singapore?

The reader might think that the above scenario is far fetched. And thankfully so. But something similar happened in 2005 at an exhalted and august international organisation – something similar but with the genders reversed. And it is incredible that there is no civil war yet.In 2005, the World Economic Forum published a report called Women’s Empowerment. The report contained lots of data, tables and charts and load full of scientific sounding statistical concepts. The report concluded at page 16 that :

That was quite an indictment of policy makers across the globe, including that of the United States of America who ranked 22nd in the world behind Sri Lanka (war torn country at that time facing a civil war) and Colombia (country facing drug trafficking gun-totting warlords). Singapore ranked 65th behind the African nations of Ghana, Uganda, Namibia, and Botswana. How did this come about? A clue would be found tossed into the Appendix at page 21 where it was stated that :

This clue showed that prior years’ reports captured both statistics where women surpassed men as well as where men surpassed women. However, by the time of the 2005 report, only statistics where men surpassed women were captured to support the conclusion that there was no gender equality. This was achieved by neutralising all statistics where women surpassed men – ie truncating such statistics to ‘1’ for equality. This bigotted methodology was a mirror image of  the imaginery Taleban story above. The 2005 methodology hid the true variety in women’s achievements, and more particularly, that in many areas, women surpassed men in their achievements. The bigotted approach adopted by the 2005 report leaves a reader with the suspicion that : if areas where women surpassed men were taken into account with equal weightage, they would balance the other areas relied on by the 2005 report.An alternative perspective on the true gender statistics might be found in an article entitled Gender Divide : www.warrenfarrell.com . The author observed that women were under-represented in various fields and leadership positions not because of gender discrimination  but because (a) women had more life style options – ie more options for better work-life balance; and (b) women had priorities that led them to different paths other than straight up the corporate ladder.In Singapore, the Women’s Charter was last century’s affirmative action for women based on the gender inequality of the time. Half a century ago, had a gender equality survey been conducted on third world Singapore, there was little doubt that it would have presented a strong case for its affirmative legislation. Half a century later, there is general parity between number of men and women studying in our Universities and in our working world. There is great doubt whether the Women’s Charter is still needed in first world Singapore today.Several aspects of the law found wanting has been discussed in various articles within this series on Men’s Rights. What is left is our law relating to matrimonial asssets. In the United Kingdom, Baroness Ruth Deech, a former lecturer on family law at Oxford University has gone on record to say that London had become the divorce capital of Europe because of British Court’s generous awards of marimonial assets to women at divorce. Her observations suggested that while the distribution of matrimonial assets might have been fair between divorcees at the lower end of the economic scale, its application at the upper end of the economic scale was : (a) unfair (disproportionate to the effort put in); (b) demeaning to women (ie to the majority of who were presumably honest and hard working); and (c) encouraged sham marriages (ie by women who married rich men for money). With this forceful indictment of divorce laws in the United Kingdom, it is time for Singapore to examine our own divorce laws.

Ex-husbands fight tooth and nail to prevent their assets from falling into the hands of their ex-wives. But most ex-husbands would fight less if their assets were to fall into the hands of their children. This brings us back to the question whether a Family Charter may be more suitable for today’s Singapore. The Women’s Charter was last century’s affirmative action to protect women. Naturally, the Family Court thought that the best way to protect the interest of the child was for the husband to transfer the matrimonial home to the wife who had care and control of their son. This was done purportedly in the interests of the child. But it’s immediate benefit was the ex-wife. And it generated a lot of unnecessary litigation over distribution of matrimonial assets.A Family Charter on the other hand will, by its very name, suggest that the legislation is for the interests of all parties. With such legislation, a Family Court may be more interested in the assets of both husbands and wives, and more inclined to transfer a father’s assets/windfall to his children (rather than from ex-husbands to ex-wives). Finally, with less of a windfall, women may be less ready to head for the divorce court. If a woman could be astounded that her well regarded and well beloved father was unfaithful, she might see her unfaithful husband in a better light as well — just like the wife in Sex Lies and Videotape.Jonathan Lee

Tags: affirmative action, empower, family, matrimonial assets, men, Women

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