Aware Chief Wants to Heal Rift With Upset Members

The Straits Times ran this story on 20 April 2009:

Aware chief wants to heal rift with upset members
by Wong Kim Hoh

AS ITS new president, Ms Josie Lau says her priority is to reconcile members of the Association of Women And Research (Aware) following the controversial leadership change on March 28.

She hopes that an extraordinary general meeting to be held soon will provide an opportunity for an open discussion.

'The team has clearly fissured. I want to operate such that my members can support me, and we can all disagree in an agreeable environment,' she said.

Ms Lau and Aware's new honorary treasurer Maureen Ong appeared on Channel News Asia's half-hour Talking Point programme aired last night.

They said they could not understand why the Aware old guard had been unhappy with the change, when the exco's new faces had merely responded to calls to serve women.

Asked if their takeover was a planned coup, Ms Lau said: 'No.' She and Ms Ong claimed they had only just got to know each other.

They were short on details about their plans, saying it was too soon.

But Ms Lau said change was needed because Aware had lost its focus and diversified too much, going into too many different areas. The result was that it did not have enough depth.

'Like any good corporation, if you have diversified too much, consolidate,' she said. 'And as with any new committee, we know that resources are always limited, (so) let's take a look and review what is done in the past that is good, let's keep that, and what new ideas we have, bring on.'

She said she hoped to start a mentoring scheme to groom younger women for leadership positions.

In fact, she already had a new programme called 'Wind Beneath My Wings' in mind, and said it would pair younger women with successful role models such as former Aware president Claire Chiang and Singapore Ambassador to the United States Chan Heng Chee.

The past three weeks have seen a series of stormy events at Aware after a large group of new members swarmed the annual general meeting and voted in an exco of mostly unknowns.

Mrs Claire Nazar was elected president, but quit after just 11 days.

She revealed in The Sunday Times yesterday that she gave up because of the aggressive tactics of the new office bearers, who seemed in a rush to replace sub-committee heads and disregarded input and advice from older Aware members.

Ms Lau filled the gap when she was appointed president last week, but immediately landed in trouble with her employer DBS Bank, which said it had advised her not to take up the top post.

Meanwhile, a group of 160 Aware members have called for an extraordinary general meeting to table a vote of no confidence in the new team.

Last night, Ms Lau said she and her team had remained silent because events had moved so fast.

As for her problem with her employer, she said it 'has been resolved', but was still under discussion.

Explaining why she took the post, she said: 'I felt that I had to pick up the baton, to run and to continue to lead this organisation that had been mired in controversies in the last one, two weeks.'

Near the end of the programme Ms Lau was asked how her exco would respond to a woman facing discrimination at work because of her sexuality.

She replied: 'Aware is a secular organisation. We are not there to push our personal religious beliefs. We do not discriminate against anyone of particular religion, whether you are a man or woman.

'Talking about sexual discrimination, it is a very controversial topic, and the new exco will have to take a new look at this and see what is the role we want to take.'