How female CEOs are building for women in Asia: ‘In Chinese tradition, we always favor the son’
Good morning, Broadsheet readers! Karlie Kloss and Joshua Kushner acquire Life magazine, Vice President Kamala Harris unveiled new AI rules for government agencies, and four female CEOs discuss issues affecting women in Asia at the Fortune Innovation Forum.
- Top takeaways. While the number of female CEOs slowly but steadily inch upward in the U.S., the Asia-Pacific region is also home to more and more influential female business leaders.
Many of my Fortune colleagues spent the past few days hearing from several of those CEOs at the Fortune Innovation Forum in Hong Kong. Below are some key takeaways from the gathering of top global executives.
- Jane Sun is CEO of Trip.com, the Shanghai-based travel service provider behind Skyscanner, Ctrip, and its eponymous website. Running a business with $6.2 billion in annual revenue makes Sun one of the few female chiefs in China Big Tech.
At the Fortune Innovation Forum, she told attendees how when she first joined the company almost two decades ago, she had a young baby at home. Today, Trip.com offers employee benefits such as stipends for new parents, taxi rides for pregnant workers, birthday gifts up to $1,400 for children until the age of 5, and egg-freezing—all relatively unusual (and in the case of egg-freezing, sometimes controversial) in China, where much government attention is on the country's falling birth rate. "If you don't like it, you don't need to use it," Sun said of her company's benefits.
- Joey Wat, the CEO of KFC and Taco Bell operator Yum China, joined Sun for this conversation. Yum China's most impactful benefit, she said, has been allowing employees to add their parents to their health insurance plans. "A lot of women are responsible not only for their children but for their parents. It’s very challenging,” Wat explained.
- Bonnie Chan is the CEO of stock exchange HKEX. The exchange instituted a rule that listed companies must not have single-gender boards by the end of 2024. With the deadline approaching, HKEX hasn't decided whether or how to punish firms that don't meet the requirement yet. But Chan suggested that Hong Kong lagging behind other major financial hubs on this issue could be attributed to the number of family-owned businesses. “In Chinese tradition, we always favor the son,” Chan said.
- Walmart International CEO Kathryn McLay also joined the Fortune Innovation Forum group in Hong Kong. She talked about Walmart's continued adoption of generative AI and its application to different growth markets—more in digital-native India than in Mexico, where the retailer is building in-store kiosks for consumers who don't have internet access. In China, 48% of transactions are now digital compared to less than 5% in 2019. “Customers can expect a more delightful experience in retail,” she said. “We’re just only on the cusp of that now.”
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
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This story was originally featured on Fortune.com
