At Hon Christopher Patten
香港總督府
Appendix J
GOVERNMENT HOUSE
HONG KONG
3
23 November 1992
J Mytha.
saw on
Democracy and the Women of Hong Kong
Thank you for your open letter which I my return last Saturday, and for warning me that you would be issuing it in my absence.
As I said in my letter of 27 August, I take 2 personal interest in the issues that you and other women's groups are concerned about. It would, however,
be premature for me to commit the Government to any course of action before the Executive Council considers the inter-departmental working group's recommendations, which I expect to be at around the turn of the year. Despite what was said in the SCMP article, no decision has yet been taken about the introduction of legislation against sex discrimination, nor on the setting up of a "women's commission", on which the views expressed by LegCo members and others are being carefully considered.
I am frankly a little disappointed that you and members of AWARE believe that women' have been left out of the democratic process under my proposals for constitutional development. I believe that those proposals will give both men and women in Hong Kong a greater say in running the affairs of their community. The very nature of a functional constituency system prevents us from including those who are not active in the labour market, be they students, pensioners or housewives (or indeed, house-husbands). But my proposals do not in any way discriminate against or disenfranchise women; indeed they should enable a far greater number of women than at present to participate in the functional constituency election.
I would also like to emphasise that members of advisory bodies, including the Governor's Business Council, are appointed on the basis of merit, not on
It is not of course possible to invite every
gender.