Ambassadors as a function have no gender. They are envoys, like angels, very androgynous.
Interview with H.E. Dr. Eva Hager
Austrian Ambassador to Thailand
Wednesday 12 June, 14:00 – 15:30 H
at Austrian Embassy
What are the general differences that you can see, when comparing Thai women with Austrian women?
Regardless of nationality and occupation, working women in general struggle to show more competence, aquire a better career profile and to be equally accepted and/or promoted to equal positions. Inequality is decreasing, but still present. This goes especially for positions of more responsibility and criticality, rather than for positions that require minor competences.
But for me, Ambassadors as a function have no gender. They are envoys, like angels, very androgynous. That is the way I see Ambassadors.
I would warn of gender stereotypes. Not necessarily are women more sensitive, have more empathy, are better team-workers etc., and not necessarily do men show leadership, decisiveness, less emotion etc., like often entrenched.
What impact do you see for your role as Austrian Ambassador on the education and development of girls and women in Thailand?
It is important for girls and women, not only in Thailand, but everywhere, to identify with strong role-models. In Austria, for instance, we have the Girls’ Day once a year. This is, when institutions which are not traditionally a female bastion, open their work-places for girls to have a look and examine what kind of future profession and role they could find there. So, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs regularly opens its doors to girls on this day, as well as other ministries, universities, laboratories, the police, the military, and many other not so traditional work-places for women.
I am sure that when I go to schools or universities, or when I hold a public conference, female students and also women, who look up to up-grading their career in a not so traditional field, feel curious and empowered to push forward to realize their ambitions.
Comparing Thailand and Austria, how much support and attention is given to female empowerment?
In Austria, we have a government policy – irrespective of the political parties forming the government – of gender mainstreaming in all areas. This means, that new policies and orientations, budgetary decisions and so on must always reflect a gender –perspective, it must always be evaluated in what way these policies and decisions support and empower women, to what extent they would affect women’s positions positively or negatively. The aim is to raise the percentage of women in all professions and at all levels to 50%, and until a quota of 40% of women is reached, a woman should be promoted to an eligible higher position, if she were better or even only equally qualified for this position as the best qualified male competitor. This is enshrined in the law for equal treatment and non-discrimination. However, it is also a question of interpretation how to handle this and not always applied in the best possible way. But it helps in building awareness of the need to give an extra boost to women against stereotyped attitudes and always examine the possibility of promoting a woman from a group of contenders.
In Thailand, since 2015, there is a law on gender equality in place. There are a number of efforts by different institutions to empower and promote women, e.g. the Thailand Institute of Justice under its President HRH Princess Bajrakitiyabha works together with UN-Women on studies to empower women in the field of justice, e.g. as judges and prosecutors, or towards sensitizing a gender-perspective in criminal justice.
In Thailand, women form more than 30% of CEOs and leadership positions in private companies, as well as in law-firms – despite the still relatively low number of women judes (around 27%) or prosecutors. On the other hand, the number of women in politics is still limited (in the government, parliament, autonomous institutions like the Election Commission and so on), and in some public services like the police, but on the overall the percentage of women in public service is more than 50%.
In Austria, we have a law that the percentage of women in management and supervisory boards of companies publicly listed on a stock-exchange must be at least 30%. In companies with a strong public share-holding of at least 50% the actual percentage is 35%, however, in other private companies, the percentage of women CEOs and women in high-ranking management positions is still low. On the other hand, we have presently 40% of women in leading positions in our MOFA, and 36% of the Ambassadors being women. Our new expert interim government until the elections in September 2019 is gender balanced, with a woman Prime Minister, for the first time in history. In the parliament we have also, depending on party-membership, up to 40% of women. Still, the extent to which women are in the more challenging of such positions: very big embassies, chairing important parliamentary committees etc. may still be less than the overall percentage.
What are the differences you see between male and female teamwork at the Austrian Embassy Bangkok, compared to what you experienced at the Austrian Embassy in other countries?
We have a gender balance as to the diplomatic staff in positions of responsibility, and my Deputy is a woman. In the locally recruited work-force, especially in the consular Department, there is a majority of women, which – however – shows, that there are obviously more suitable female candidates fulfilling the requirement of good or reasonable German and Thai language skills than male candidates. I think, there is good net-working in every respect, and no female-male barriers. When I went on my first full-fledged diplomatic assignment as first secretary and Deputy Head of Mission at the Austrian Embassy Tunis in 1990, people would still ask me: Has the Ambassador chosen you? Does he have a right to choose? The meaning was: What has prompted the Ambassador to accept a woman as his Deputy? I think, this kind of mentality has completely changed, I do not think that female diplomats assigned to Embassies or to other positions of responsibility in our Mofa would be asked that kind of questions nowadays, neither from within nor from outside the Ministry.
Do you see differences in what education means for the career development of Thai women in comparison to Austrian/European women?
I think, education is very important for the career development of women everywhere. I think, men might rise to junior management positions in companies easier with a minor educational background, for women, education and degrees still constitute an essential pillar. I do not know, whether in Thailand, where family connections and elite networks play a more important role than in Austria, whether women due to such connections get an extra boost compared with the situation in Austria. But I think in Thailand too, education might be primordial for women in order to be picked for higher positions or be promoted.
To which degree is gender equality implemented in the Austrian business / diplomat circles?
I think, in business circles we are still at the beginning. When I go to business meetings of Austrian company representatives here in Bangkok, I am still in a dominantly male environment. The Austrian export promotion agency, the Economic Chamber, which has also official representatives all over the world who work under the roof of the Embassies, has only recently started to promote women in their foreign representations. Presently, I see more women in their representations, as Deputy heads of Mission, and sometimes as Heads of Mission.
The policy of promoting women has started much earlier in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, in the eighties, when I entered the service. I was among the first of those women who were accepted in the Ministry in greater numbers, let us say 25% of the overall new admittances. When I entered the Ministry, there was no woman at any very senior level like Director General, and very few women as Ambassadors, only two women as Directors, conspicuously in the Divisions of Consular Affairs, and in the Division of Cultural Affairs, so distant from politics and economics!
Today, we have more than 50% of women as Director Generals, around 40% at the overall senior management level, and 36% of women among the Ambassadors. When I said at a party in 1986, that I was a (newly admitted, junior) diplomat in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, a young gentleman exclaimed excitedly how interesting it was that ladies could become diplomats, he would not have thought so!!? To pose such a question today would be unthinkable.. Still, things were far from perfect for instance in the ninetieth: I was Deputy Head of Mission at our Embassy in Mexico, and very often sent by my Ambassador to attend the EU’s Ambassadors’ meetings on his behalf, as he preferred to concentrate on bilateral business. I was in an almost total maleonly group, at some point there was only one female Ambassador part of the group. During one meeting I remember that the Ambassador of a country with a fairly straightforward positive record on women empowerment raised the following question for discussion at the table (for me it was very embarrassing). Whether Mexico was a place suitable to have women sent as Ambassadors. This was, because his successor would be a woman and he had mentality problems in swallowing this fact. I think, that would be an impossible subject for discussion in EU-Ambassadors’ meetings world-wide nowadays.
How important is digitalization and innovation for the Austrian-Thai relationships in business or networking?
Digitalization is today on the forefront of networking and doing business. There is a strong emphasis on enhancing creativity in Austrian industries, not least by making ample use of the opportunities offered by digital economy. Austria can excel in the world through innovative solutions and technologies, an example is e.g. our flag-ship complex of the new Austrian Embassy building in Bangkok, where we are presently sitting together. Yesterday I met an Austrian business-man, representing an engineering company.His company was asked to assist in the building of condominia, in the construction rush in Bangkok. He said his company was not interested in doing what everybody could do. They were interested in delivering flag-ship solutions for complicated situations in industrial and infrastructure projects, things that others could not do. Digitalization is key to doing such things.
I have yesterday visited the Thai creative economy agency in the former postal office and I was impressed by the dimension of their work, which provides certainly scope also for future cooperation with the Embassy.
What has been your most challenging decision to make during your time as a female ambassador?
As I said, I do not talk about female ambassadors, Ambassadors do not have a gender.
As Ambassador, there were a couple of challenging decisions to be made on my first post as first Austrian resident Ambassador to Cyprus, from 2005 to 2009. A very small place, but complicated and with a great political predicament due to the division of the island since 1974. In 2006 we evacuated the Austrian citizens from Lebanon during the war in Lebanon through a naval and air bridge in Cyprus. A few hundreds of our citizens took that way, three Austrian military air-crafts landed during the evacuation effort. The planes had, of course, a special time-slot in which they could be parked at the airport. If disembarkment from a ship was late or a ship was delayed, we had to decide to take nationals of other countries on board. The evacuation had to be efficient and as many European citizens as possible had to be helped.
Another challenging thing was during our EU-Presidency in Cyprus in 2006. There was a civil society event launched to promote Austrian coffee-culture: how this culture is fostering people-to-people contacts by chatting, debate, reading, communicating and the specific atmosphere of Viennese coffee-houses. The Embassies were told they would have no burden of organizing this kind of coffee-culture-events whatsoever, they should only find out and suggest adequate places for holding these events, everything would be organized by an agency. At the end of the day, it was clear to me that in the divided Cyprus we could not envisage such events by assembling simply members of one community, we had to bring together and mix the Greek Cypriot Community and the Turkish Cypriot Community, and the best thing would be to bring together children and youngsters, only in this way it would make sense. However, for Turkish Cypriots to come to the government-controlled part of Cyprus, they would have to cross the demarcation line, the so-called “green line”. We wanted to bring school children of both sides together, but this could have been seen by the Turkish local authorities as propaganda for the internationally recognized Republic of Cyprus, as these meetings could only take place, from the Republic of Cyprus’ point of view, on the territory which was under the control of the internationally recognized government. Finally, we managed to bring school-classes of the North and the South together in the centre of Nicosia, in a coffee-shop at Ledra street, on the Greek Cypriot side of the green line, and we had Cypriot Ministers present, we had high level representatives of Turkish Cypriot Trade Unions and the Turkish Cypriot Commercial Chamber present.- In the last moment it seemed that the bus with the Turkish Cypriot pupils could not cross due to some administrative hurdles, but 10 minutes later it was cleared and passed over. At the end of the day, although politically extremely delicate, everything went smoothly and both sides were happy with it, in the first place, of course, the children themselves. It was a great success, but achieved with a very delicate balance and at high risks, also for me in my position as the Austrian Ambassador.
There were, of course, a couple of challenges during other assignments,, as Deputy Head of Mission in Tunis, where we were also the Austrian liaison to the PLO, or during my assignments in Mexico from 93 – 97 and 2013 – 17, or as Representative in the Committee of Ministers in Strasbourg, which followed the implementation of the Judgements of the European Court of Human Rights. But I do not want to go into all these details.
What are the general differences that you can see, when comparing Thai women with Austrian women?
Well, I think Thai women have on the average a very feminine silhouette and an elegantly beautiful appearance. European women may be, on the average, much more “garconne”, that is “boyish” or androgynous. So much about physical typology, without – again – falling into stereotypes. All the rest has much more to do with the the environment and situations women live in and are conditioned by.
The high percentage of Thai women in management positions in private companies, on the other hand the relatively higher percentage of European women in politics and related areas, are quite obvious. Machismo, although it is a Hispanic word, has not yet been fully overcome in both regions. We have come a far way the last hundred, the last fifty, the last thirty and even the last ten years, but we still need to come to the end of the tunnel to be in the light. That goes for Austria, as well as for Thailand.
