Gender equality

Making empowerment measurable

LANXESS recently signed the Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEP). They are a set of Principles offering guidance to business on how to promote gender equality in the workplace, marketplace and community. Established by UN Global Compact and UN Women, the WEPs are grounded in the recognition that businesses have a stake in, and a responsibility for, equal rights and opportunities.

The WEP mean, for example:

• establishing high-level corporate leadership for gender equality,
• promoting education, training and professional development for women,
• measuring and publicly reporting on progress.

On the way to more equality: company support matters

International women´s day is an opportunity to show how to overcome inequalities. Three colleagues from Greater China report on how they made their way. Waihong Loh, Lucy Li and Hui Juin Yin feel that women can succeed in the profession they want – given enough support from the company for both career development and work-life balance. At LANXESS, they never experienced gender as a barrier to leadership roles.

At LANXESS Greater China, the percentage of female managers corresponds to the percentage of women in the workforce:

• 26% of employees in Greater China are female,
• 27% of employees at management level in Greater China are female,
• 33% of plant managers in Greater China are female. 

Education is key to gender equality

Growing up in Malaysia, Waihong Loh always wanted to work in a manufacturing plant. Her parents were professionals who worked at production sites, which she had the opportunity to frequently visit from an early age. As a chemistry graduate, she naturally chose to work in the chemical manufacturing industry. 

Sixteen years ago, Waihong joined LANXESS as Head of Application & Testing Center at the Wuxi site. The company has a tradition of female leadership. Currently, 33% of its plant managers in Greater China are women. Waihong was promoted to the position of plant manager due to her achievements and strong support from her supervisor.

She has found her own strategy to get along with her male colleagues, who form the majority in production. Empathy allows her to build trust with them.

Waihong enjoys being a role model

Waihong further extends her empathy in leadership to the disadvantaged. As a well-educated woman, she regards education as key to gender equality. She has been working with her Labor Union team to support kids, especially girls, of a primary school in Suichuan County, a deprived area in Jiangxi Province. The program is called the LANXESS School of Care. In addition to financial aid, the company mentors the children. “Rather than merely making donations, I think what they also need is to expand their horizons. So, we helped them opening up to new ideas, especially the awareness that education can change their lives,” Waihong says.

Men and women benefit from flexible solutions

The corona outbreak in 2020 put Hui Juin Yin, Business Support ASEAN, Liquid Purification Technology Business Unit, in a difficult position. Before the epidemic the mother of two commuted every day from Malaysia across the border to LANXESS’ Singapore office. In March 2020, Malaysia declared a lockdown. Schools were closed nationwide. Her elder son started attending online classes at home, receiving teaching materials and homework through a virtual classroom. Someone had to help him prepare for the online courses; as a result, Hui Juin was in urgent need of a solution.

Digitalization makes it easier to combine work and family responsibilities 

Her supervisor suggested she adopted the flexible working solution offered by the company. “It was exactly what I needed,” she says. She began to work from home. Until today, everything works out very well. Only in cases when she needs to send samples or original documents to customers, her team members in the Singapore office gladly lend her a helping hand. Strong support from management, her supervisor and colleagues made her feel very lucky.

As the number of COVID-19 cases went down in Malaysia, schools reopened this year and her younger daughter also began her learning journey. “Thanks to flexible working, I did not miss any big events of my kids,” Hui Juin said. Now she is looking forward to returning to the office again and meeting her colleagues on a daily basis.

Great for talented women: an environment without prejudices

Lucy Li has always had a talent for chemistry. Born into a family with a strong passion for natural sciences – her father studied math and her mother was a chemistry teacher – she enjoyed formulating cosmetics by herself in the school chemical lab. Lucy Li was a top student. She was exempted from the entrance exam and admitted to postgraduate studies at China University of Petroleum. 

Technology is a field which is traditionally dominated by men. However, Lucy says she was never treated with any gender prejudice in her career. At LANXESS, regardless of gender, a global technical network of experts is working closely together and backing each other. Lucy benefited from the open exchange and knowledge sharing in the network. It inspired her to innovative thoughts in development and helped her succeed in the role of technical management. 

More and more women are entering the world of technology

“I think women have a lot of their own particular advantages in the field of technology. We are persistently achieving our goals and paying more attention to details, which is key to the research and development work. In addition, being communicative and good at listening helps us to identify the pain points of the customers more easily,” Lucy says. At a recent trade conference for technical experts, she was amazed to find that most participants were women.