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Women have been better leaders than men during the pandemic

By Andreas Kluth

THE EVIDENCE IS IN: At least during the first wave of COVID-19 (coronavirus disease 2019), countries with female leaders suffered far lower death rates than comparable nations led by men. This doesn’t mean that the trend will necessarily persist in a second or third wave. Nor does it imply that women are also better leaders when it comes to whatever else governments find themselves doing, from reforming labor markets to waging war. But it’s worth pondering nonetheless.

In doing so, it’s of course tempting to descend into the netherworld of gender stereotypes and individual caricature. Donald Trump, president of the country with the most deaths from COVID-19, has communicated with an uninformed machismo that has provoked reactions ranging from shock to satire. Jair Bolsonaro, president of Brazil, the runner-up in coronavirus deaths, has pooh-poohed the disease as a “little flu.”

By contrast, Angela Merkel, chancellor of Germany, which has generally managed the outbreak well, has been impressed with explanations of the epidemiological R0 factor that went “viral” for their sobriety and clarity. Jacinda Ardern, prime minister of New Zealand, which has only 22 deaths from COVID-19 to date, has talked to Kiwis via Facebook Live from her home in a way that is casual and interactive but also reassuring and credible.

Erna Solberg, prime minister of Norway, with 264 deaths, has told her country’s children that “it’s OK to be scared when so many things happen at the same time,” acknowledging vulnerability even while projecting competence.

But in a new global analysis, Supriya Garikipati at the University of Liverpool and Uma Kambhampati at the University of Reading avoid stooping to mere anecdotes. Using data up to May 19, they matched the 19 countries led by women with their “nearest neighbors” according to a mix of factors including population, the economy, gender equality, openness to travel, health expenditures and the proportion of elderly people. They couldn’t use Taiwan (seven deaths), which is governed by a woman but doesn’t belong to the United Nations.

Their conclusion was unequivocal: On average, the countries run by women suffered half as many deaths from COVID-19 as the nations governed by men. And in individual pairings, “female” countries fared better than “male” ones. Why?

Part of the answer is that the female leaders generally ordered lockdowns much earlier, thus “flattening the curves” of their national outbreaks. Ardern, for instance, calls this approach “going hard and early” — she just went into another temporary lockdown after a new cluster of cases following 100 days of no local transmission at all. But that only raises the question of why women tend to come to that difficult decision so much faster than men.

One reason could be that women are more averse to risk, as most studies corroborate. But the choice facing leaders this spring wasn’t simply between more or less risk. It was a trade-off between one risk, that to life, and another, that of economic loss. So the difference between the men and women, as the study’s authors point out, was really that the women took less risk with lives and more with the economy, whereas men did the opposite. Over time, of course, death and economic loss become intertwined.

The women also tended to communicate very differently with citizens. It’s long been hypothesized that female leaders lean toward “a more democratic or participative style” whereas men are “more autocratic or directive.” That’s been hard to prove, but researchers are still studying whether women indeed bring more empathy to leadership or integrate more emotional information in their decision making.

An interpersonal, empathetic, and participatory approach certainly seems to help in managing a pandemic. This requires building and maintaining a consensus that the threat is serious, that sacrifice is necessary to protect others, and that individual liberties must be weighed against public-health considerations. And that kind of dialogue with citizens appears to be especially hard for strongmen and comparatively easier for other leaders, female or male.

Comparisons between the sexes invariably become frustrating, either verging on the stereotypical or the vague and woolly. We have no idea how the late “Iron Lady” Margaret Thatcher — or the Brittonic Queen Boudica, who gave short shrift to several Roman legions — would have managed COVID-19. In leadership, individual character and talent surely trumps gender and everything else.

That said, the pattern during this pandemic so far certainly suggests that the world could use much more female leadership. With only 19 countries of the 193 in the UN run by women, there’s plenty of room for improvement.

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Republicans feed their persecution complex

By Francis Wilkinson

THE Republican National Convention may be built around the cult of personality of Donald Trump, who is stronger, faster, smarter, richer, more magnanimous, truthful, and handsome than any human in history, but even the unparalleled glories of Trumpism are, in the end, mere reflections of the party’s true obsessions: persecution and aggression.

Those themes shape the rhetoric that conveys conservative values and inform the fantasies that occupy the party’s large and growing cohort of conspiracy theorists. They also reveal how thoroughly American conservatives view themselves as the unwilling subjects of liberal judgment, forever squirming beneath a hostile other’s gaze.

No healthy political party would elevate, and celebrate, the St. Louis couple whose great public contribution was pulling an AR-15 and a pistol on protesters who marched past the couple’s house on their way elsewhere. But Mark and Patricia McCloskey, who face low-level felony charges for “unlawful use of a weapon” and seem to have short-changed their palazzo taxes, are the quintessence of the GOP. First they felt persecuted by the presence of Black and brown strangers in their “quiet neighborhood.” Then they pulled out the home arsenal to wreak some vengeance.

In a long article in Politico this week, Tim Alberta spoke with Republicans about the wreckage of their party. The most concise accounting of moral and intellectual bankruptcy came from a longtime GOP congressional aide. “Owning the libs and pissing off the media,” Brendan Buck said to Alberta. “That’s what we believe in now. There’s really not much more to it.”

There’s a long, tragic backstory to all that, of course. But owning the libs and angering the media provide catharsis from the incessant moral demands and fact shaming that torment conservatives. Why do liberals and the news media always put the abductions and caging of migrant children in the harshest possible light? Why can’t Republicans be allowed to believe that Trump acted competently and vanquished the “Chinese virus”? Why all the censorious fact-checking?

Conservative victimization is the chaser that follows each shot of disaster — Iraq, Katrina, financial meltdown, Trump, COVID-19. The drinking ritual is so ingrained, and the inevitable liberal condemnation of the drunk drive home so dizzying, that large numbers of White Christian Republicans readily convince themselves that they are an oppressed minority, subject to greater discrimination than Blacks or LGBTQ Americans or even Muslims.

Writing more than a century ago, W.E.B. DuBois wrote of the “double consciousness” that American Blacks acquired as a survival mechanism. A Black American, DuBois wrote, is a dual being, who is “always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity.”

White conservatives are not a brutalized minority in an authoritarian system enforced by racial terrorism, as the subjects of DuBois book, The Souls of Black Folk, from which the passage above is taken, emphatically were. But as liberal facts, however self-serving, continue to shame (“own”) conservative fantasy, conservatives are acquiring their own version of double consciousness, viewing themselves through the real or imagined condescension — “amused contempt and pity” — of liberal enforcers. That the hated liberal cities, powered by mistrusted high-education elites, have been the economic engine of the nation only heightens resentment and justifies further backlash.

Metaphorically outgunned, conservatives stockpile genuine arms. Perceiving themselves caricatured by sneering elites, they watch nightly Fox News caricatures of liberalism. Culture war and racial Armageddon, with the prospect of various shades of Obamanauts ruling the land in perpetuity, threaten the conservative homeland like nothing before. These threats sanctify the most reckless counterattacks, including potentially fatal assaults on democracy and rule of law.

Persecution, or the perception of it, has hardened the conservative soul, which wasn’t all that pliable to begin with. As Dallas pastor Robert Jeffress famously said in 2016, a thuggish president isn’t a moral and political calamity; it’s the answer to White evangelical prayers. “I want the meanest, toughest, son-of-a-you-know-what I can find in that role, and I think that’s where many evangelicals are,” he explained. Better to wreck everything than let liberals run it.

This week’s convention marks another milestone in hazy double consciousness and the interplay of persecution and aggression. Conservatives rightly assume that liberals expect an embarrassing carnival of grifters, racists, and demagogues. To own the libs, Republicans will exceed their expectations. 

BLOOMBERG OPINION

Tax competition, not exemption

Governments around the world have to grapple with raising new revenues because their lockdown policies have crippled the businesses and people that pay them regular taxes while they expanded public borrowings. Raising tax rates would appear very insensitive — the likely direction is to cut taxes to help ailing businesses and this might lead to a new round of tax competition among neighboring countries and economies.

The Philippines, through the Department of Finance (DoF) has proposed a drastic reduction in the corporate income tax (CIT) under the Corporate Recovery and Tax Incentives for Enterprises Act (CREATE) bill. The current 30% will become 25% in the year of its legislation, then there will be a 1% per year reduction starting 2023 until it reaches 20% in 2027. Very good move by the DoF, among the few instances where I support them.

Five major East Asian economies have CIT of 16.5% to 20% — HK, Singapore, Thailand, Taiwan, and Vietnam. When the Philippines attain the 20% CIT by 2027, these economies may cut their rates further. Indonesia had a CIT of 25% until 2019 and brought it down to 22% this year — the law was made before the pandemic.

The Philippines’ high CIT and withholding tax for dividends, interest, and royalties, are among the disincentives for the entry of foreign direct investments (FDI) which is the lowest among the country’s more mature and developed neighbors. Our FDI inward stock (net of inflows less outflows through the years) was only $88 billion in 2019 (see the table).


The DoF has noted the country’s low tax efficiency. In CIT, our 30% collects only 3.7% of GDP or an efficiency of only 12.3%, vs Thailand’s 20% that collects 5% of GDP or 25.2% efficiency, or Vietnam’s 20% that collects 7.3% of GDP or 36.5% efficiency.

When it comes to VAT efficiency, the country’s 12% collects only 4.3% of GDP or 35.7% efficiency, vs Thailand’s 10% that collects 4.1% of GDP or 59% efficiency, or Vietnam’s 10% that collects 6.1% of GDP or 61% efficiency.

Aside from lower CIT, the CREATE bill has two other important provisions — lengthen the net operating loss carry over (NOLCO) from three to five years, and maintain the 5% gross income earned (GIE) up to nine years with the sunset period changed from two to seven years to four to nine years. Corporate losses this year can be carried up to the next five years under the NOLCO to reduce tax liabilities of companies, assuming they have survived these horrible, strict, indefinite and no timetable lockdowns which have crippled if not killed thousands of SMEs already.

Speaking of discouraging or disallowing tax exemptions, there is one sector that has a horrible lobby, the electric vehicles (EVs, those e-cars, e-UVs, e-bikes, e-trikes…). They want their EVs to have exemptions or reductions on import tariffs, excise tax, and VAT; they also want exemptions on import tariff and VAT for their charging equipment. Plus various non-fiscal incentives.

When the government wants more revenues and you exempt some sectors from tax, this means you will have to hike taxes of other sectors — bad. The TRAIN law imposed higher excise tax rates for petroleum products and the regular cars, UVs, but the EVs want zero tax — how horrible and crony-like could that be?

Meanwhile, the Department of Health — initiated drug price dictatorship policy has wreaked havoc on the financials of innovator pharma — the companies that produce new medicines, new vaccines — while favoring the non-innovator, generic, and local pharma. Criteria #4 of EO 104 imposes price controls on innovator, more effective, more-prescribed medicines hoping that there will be product pull out so that the less effective, less-prescribed medicines by local pharma will be left to make more money.

Some lessons and conclusions that can be derived from the above discussions are the following: One, improve revenue efficiency via lower tax rate with little or few exemptions in CIT, withholding tax, VAT, others. Two, ignore the EVs tax exemption lobby, and slap them with existing import and excise tax rates as regular vehicles. Three, price controls for one group of manufacturers and favoritism for another group is plain cronyism. And, four, have the rule of law always, the law applies equally to unequal people and sectors. Tax hikes or tax cuts or zero taxes on one sector should apply to all other sectors or sub-sectors.

 

Bienvenido S. Oplas, Jr. is the president of Minimal Government Thinkers

minimalgovernment@gmail.com

Getting in the mood

 

WHILE karaoke music invites participation, even enthusiasm, mood tunes are expected to be left alone. Mood music plays in dental offices, restaurants, pubs, and malls. It used to be played in full elevators, like Muzak. It’s pleasant background static, as unobtrusive as wallpaper, to put you in a temporary emotional state, usually pleasant. You can have a quiet conversation while the background sound is playing — how could you forget where you parked the car? Of course, there are pubs (we may enjoy them again someday) with live bands to amp the mood to frenzy and the stomping of feet to “YMCA.”

The accompanying sound that sets the mood in a place may not even be music. The spas, temporarily displaced by social distancing (will there be masked masseuses?), used to feature sound effects like a breeze going through a bamboo grove, chirping cicadas, croaking frogs, or even mating calls of sperm whales splashing along the ocean. Not sure what emotions whales can conjure.

Moods determine the quality of a conversation, discussion, or even prepared speeches that a particular emotional state, like hysteria, can derail into an off-script rant — later featured as unbelievable headlines. (Did he just threaten the bishops?)

It’s not clear what triggers a particular mood. It’s not just background music. Stress over unpaid bills, loss of a job, or even the success of other countries in combating a pandemic can put one in a foul mood. The vaccines are coming.

Should there be a job like “mood reader”? One does not need to take up psychology to be able to read moods. There are benefits to having this ability akin to weather forecasting — scattered showers, strong winds, and thunderstorms in the evening. And the position does not have to be full time or even separately compensated, say, if one’s day job is senator.

Identifying a mood is a basic survival skill for favor-seekers. It’s not necessarily only a secretary or executive assistant that can read the mood of her boss — is he humming “Nessun dorma” this morning? Or shouting The Rolling Stones hit “Satisfaction”? The mood, known beforehand, makes the difference between being blessed with loaves and fishes, or cast out among those weeping and gnashing their teeth.

A person, not prone to mood swings, is described as steady and reliable. His decision-making is consistent. He is expected to raise a predictable set of questions when a decision is sought. His priorities are transparent. He has no hidden agenda. This steady mood of willingness to listen allows subordinates and business partners to present their case with certain data and lay out their analysis and recommendations. There is no fear of triggering a tantrum. Such clarity of rules and criteria, and how these are applied, makes this leader prized.

What about moody leaders? Those prone to mood swings, now deliriously happy, tomorrow depressed and grouchy. Isn’t this bipolar personality bound to be at least inconsistent?

Even friends are temporary and often situational. No one is safe from a diatribe waiting to be unleashed. It is the situation and the mood that attract a particular group of whisperers, usually with axes to grind. Messages tend to be disjointed and follow the swing of the mood that goes with them.

Moods are emotional. They drive behavior, like the purchasing decision and where to dine-in when it’s allowed again. (Do you feel like sushi?)

The economy too is driven by moods.

Staying on the sidelines and sitting on cash (hail to the king) rather than investing this in stocks, bonds, properties, or art is the prevailing mood nowadays. It orders our mind to stay in survival mode and we behave like squirrels gathering the nuts for the time we want to be… well, nutty.

How do we change this mood of fear for the future? Is it a temporary emotional state?

What we shouldn’t do is scare ourselves with doomsday scenarios (the vaccines are all unsafe), fake news, and conspiracy theories. What they shouldn’t do is sic the dogs on moody comments.

Like mood music that influences our emotions subliminally, a new background noise should play in our mind. If our economy was already able to accomplish 21 consecutive quarters of positive growth, surely we can do a reprise after just two bad ones. Does that thought get you in the mood?

 

Tony Samson is Chairman and CEO, TOUCH xda

ar.samson@yahoo.com

‘All girls, buy it!’ In China, Perfect Diary gives cosmetics world a makeover with live streams, low prices

BEIJING/HONG KONG — With chat groups, video streams and low prices for foundation, China’s Perfect Diary has emerged from nowhere four years ago to become a cosmetics giant for the digital age, trailing only L’Oreal and LVMH in the world’s no. 2 market for make-up.

The Guangzhou-based beauty unicorn is now setting its sights on a Hong Kong initial public offering (IPO). Before that, it’s driving into Southeast Asia, targeting more millennial social media users like Wen Shan, a 21-year-old student from Guangdong.

Ms. Wen has ditched Western brands like NARS and Revlon and devotes her annual budget of 3,000 yuan ($434) to Perfect Diary cosmetics like eyeshadow palettes. Most cost less than 100 yuan and are made by the same contract manufacturers that supply Western brands.

She converted to Perfect Diary after a roommate’s tip. “The foreign brands have a large variety of foundations that often confuses me and I can’t tell which one is best on me… The Chinese brand knows what is good for local consumers.”

Though still a global minnow compared with powerhouse L’Oreal, Perfect Diary now has 4% of the Chinese market for color cosmetics, according to Euromonitor 2019 data. That ranks it joint third with Estee Lauder’s MAC, beaten only by luxury giant LVMH’s Christian Dior and three L’Oreal brands that stack up to more than 20%.

The research firm estimates the overall market more than doubled from 2015 to nearly $8 billion in 2019 – and will mushroom to almost $15 billion in 2024 as China’s middle class expands.

Perfect Diary’s rise has been fuelled by blending low prices and social media platforms like Douyin—TikTok for China—and WeChat, collecting customer data it can use to design and roll out new products rapidly, helped by charismatic influencers with huge online followings like “Lipstick King” Li Jiaqi.

Yelling his catchphrase “All girls, buy it!,” Mr. Li has given Perfect Diary products rave reviews in popular live streams on giant e-commerce retailer Alibaba’s Taobao platform.

Analysts said Perfect Diary’s rise has been boosted by younger, Generation Z consumers’ willingness to embrace homegrown products.

“Gen Z is growing up in a prosperous China,” said Mei Xin, analyst at Huatai Securities. “Unlike the older generation, they don’t believe the moon in the West is rounder than in China.”

A spokesperson for L’Oreal in China didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment on the growth of homegrown brands, but said L’Oreal typically welcomes healthy competition.

EYES ON SOUTHEAST ASIA
Founded by entrepreneur Huang Jinfeng’s Yatsen E-Commerce firm in 2017 as an online, China-focused operation, the company now also has more than 150 stores in China—with a target of 200 this year—as well as international aspirations.

“Yatsen E-Commerce has always had a vision of creating a domestic beauty brand with true international influence,” Mr. Huang told Reuters.

In recent months, it has opened its own online store for Southeast Asia countries including the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. It also has an official store on Lazada, Alibaba’s Southeast Asia arm.

“We listen to users and we immediately carry out research on products they want,” said Mr. Huang, citing the example of data gathered during the coronavirus pandemic that resulted in a new pressed face powder.

“Consumers need to fix their makeup more often as the face mask takes off makeup,” Mr. Huang said.

Perfect Diary currently uses contract manufacturers including Milan-headquartered Intercos，which has a factory in China that supplies L’Oreal and others. Since March it been building its own plant in Guangdong, due on line by end-2021.

$500 MLN IPO, UP TO $5 BLN VALUATION?
Perfect Diary doesn’t disclose financial performance or liabilities, nor say whether it’s profitable.

Already backed by investors like Hillhouse Capital, Sequoia Capital, Tiger Global Management, Boyu Capital and Chinese Culture Group, Yatsen is currently raising a pre-IPO round that values it at around $4 billion, according to two people with direct knowledge of the matter.

It has also appointed Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley to lead a Hong Kong IPO that aims to raise up to $500 million by the end of 2020, according to two separate sources.

One person said the IPO valuation could likely reach $5 billion—big, yet dwarfed by L’Oreal’s more-than-$180 billion market value.

The people declined to be named because the information was not public. Perfect Diary declined to comment on IPO plans.

Meanwhile, Ms. Wen continues to add lipsticks and foundations to her Perfect Diary make-up kit. “I don’t care much about the originality of a brand,” she said.

“I didn’t know Perfect Diary was a Chinese brand the first time I bought it. But now I know, I have a natural good feeling about using a domestic brand.” — Reuters

Three things that can help entrepreneurs start their tech business

Entrepreneurs can improve themselves by joining online communities where members share tips and provide moral support. They can also sign up for online courses on websites such as Skillshare and Udemy.

By Mariel Alison L. Aguinaldo

The pandemic has seen many Filipinos starting their own businesses and leaning heavily on technology for operations. In a forum for women entrepreneurs, experts offered three tips that can help anyone start their business ventures smoothly.

1. Through learning

“If you know how to operate and get on to Zoom and how to find all the posts that are on Facebook, you are already way ahead of a lot of people,” said Cheryl Liew, chief executive officer of LifeWorkz, a Singapore-based work-life integration consultancy firm.

Entrepreneurs can improve themselves by joining online communities where members share tips and provide moral support. They can also sign up for online courses on websites such as Skillshare and Udemy.

Learning must be done consistently in order for it to be effective. “Start spending all of your day learning things. Just give it one hour per day and do it every day, so that by the end of the week, you will see that you have spent seven hours learning something and also practicing,” said Ayeesha Hammaad, co-founder and partner of Bazar Nagar, a Pakistan-based e-commerce platform for women.

2. Through purpose

A strong sense of purpose can push people beyond their comfort zone. Arianne David shared how RJ David, her husband and fellow co-founder of e-commerce platform sulit.com.ph, learned how to code even if he was a mechanical engineer by profession. 

“You have to really dig deeper and understand your journey, understand what you can do… and how to help yourself, your family, and the community around you,” she said, adding that this journey must be undertaken at one’s own pace. 

“I have seen young people, they end up nowhere after five years because they’ve been spending three months on one opportunity, and another six months on another opportunity,” said Ms. Hammaad. “Find out what is this one thing that you would like to do and keep doing it without feeling hurried.”

3. Through grit

The path to success may be littered with failure, especially for first-time entrepreneurs who are only getting the lay of the land. 

“Rejection, as I’ve learned very hard, is a redirection to a better ‘yes.’ If you keep that in perspective, rejection is a way for you to eliminate what is not for you,” said Ms. Liew.

Handling a business can be exhausting when there are other responsibilities to juggle. When it gets too much, entrepreneurs can try slowing down before thinking of completely giving up. “They say, if you cannot run, walk; if you cannot walk, crawl… Just keep spending your efforts, your energies, and your time with consistency,” said Ms. Hammaad.

 

 

 

 

Acknowledging the value of women’s unpaid emotional and physical labor at home

By Patricia B. Mirasol 

“Many companies hire and manage their workforce with the assumption that someone is taking care of the family and home,” said Doris Magsaysay-Ho, president and chief executive officer of The Magsaysay Group of Companies, who had an a-ha moment while observing her daughter, Alex, juggle the demands of career and motherhood. 

“I witnessed her working hard to make meaningful contributions to the company and trying to merit her position while keeping one eye on the videocam to make sure her children were safe. I could feel the frustration she went through when she missed her son’s baseball home run or was home late for dinner,” she said during a recent webinar. And then Ms. Magsaysay-Ho realized all her colleagues shared the same struggle. 

Employers must realize, Ms. Magsaysay-Ho said, that members of the workforce have concerns—such as guiding children with remote learning, or finding new caregivers for grandparents—unrelated to their jobs. Employers also need to have an idea of how much support employees need since unaddressed concerns can lead to lower productivity.

Ms. Magsaysay-Ho observed that many of us receive management and leadership skills at work but have not been trained to leaders at home. “We all know how to conduct a company meeting. Do we know how to do a family meeting?,” she said. 

MULTIPLE-BURDENED FILIPINAS
In the Philippines, concepts such as “Ilaw ng tahanan” (referring to a mother’s role as the proverbial light of every family) weigh heavily on Filipinas, who have to pull double shifts as they work from home on top of doing the housework. 

Filipino working women are multiple-burdened, consultant and program content developer Maricel Pangilinan-Arenas said in the event titled “Empowering the Family: Leadership Principles from Business to Home,” organized by the workplace gender equality group Philippine Business Coalition for Women Empowerment (PBCWE). 

Apart from the aforementioned “double shift,” there’s also the necessity of commuting daily, helping children with homework, fulfilling partner expectations, supporting poor relatives, and paying bills to make ends meet. This is not exclusive to the Philippines.  

To champion a positive shift towards women at work, the value of unpaid emotional and physical labor must be appreciated. It is estimated that if women’s unpaid work were assigned a monetary value, it would constitute between 10% and 39%of GDP. Ms. Magsaysay-Ho voiced the notion of homemakers getting a tax-free salary. 

“Let’s get out of saying, ‘I only work at home.’” Ms. Pangilinan-Arenas added, “People don’t realize how much work gets into it. You suddenly realize, ‘I should be helping.’”

DIVIDING THE WORKLOAD
One way to make work-from-home arrangements succeed is accepting that no one can do it all. “You cannot be Darna all your life. Let us acknowledge that even Darna gets her rest,” said Sarah Lausa-Niguas, research head of People Management Association of the Philippines. 

She advised thinking clearly about the situation to determine which aspects of home life need support, and then dividing the workload among family members, each according to their own capacity. In her own family, for instance, her seven-year-old daughter gets up early every day in anticipation of doing the chore she chose: cooking rice. 

She also encouraged bayanihan (a term referring to the spirit of communal unity) in one’s neighborhood. Practicing bayanihan can be as simple as asking next-door neighbors if they need anything before doing a personal grocery run and offering to get them yourself. 

FAMILY DYNAMICS
To further its vision of women and men growing within organizations and championing culture change at work and at home, PBCWE co-developed a Family Leadership Program Module with the Magsaysay Group of Companies. 

It employs gender equality concepts and comes in three parts: personal vision; self care and energy management; and family vision. Among the activities are writing a personal vision statement, answering an energy management and self-care checklist, and participating in family exercises that expound on purpose and values. The objective is to help employees translate their personal visions into collective family strategies and create supportive and organized “home teams.” 

The module helps families learn how to divide tasks equitably, diminish harmful gender stereotypes, communicate effectively, and be each other’s best cheerleaders. “The work begins at home,” Ms. Pangilinan-Arcenas noted.

Companies and organizations interested in the module may send their inquiries to communications@pbcwe.com.

Game makers battle to boost accessibility for players with disabilities

As a kid growing up in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, Randy Fitzgerald couldn’t make friends by playing sports. He was born with arthrogryposis, a muscle and joint disorder that made activities like soccer or baseball out of the question. Over time, he discovered another powerful way to bond with his peers—video games. 

These days, Mr. Fitzgerald, 41, is a renowned gamer, known in the pro community as N0M4D. Since his arms and legs have limited mobility, he plays by using his upper lip and chin. When he’s not competing, he also consults with video-game companies on ways to improve their products for players with special needs.

Recently, such efforts have been gaining momentum across the gaming world. “A lot more people are able to be in the public eye and show what they can do with our disabilities,” he said.

The rise in prominence of gamers like Mr. Fitzgerald reflects a broader movement in the industry, advocates say, to make video games more accessible for people with visual, hearing, or motor impairments. In the ultra-competitive $150 billion market, improved accessibility for disabled players has become one more way that game makers can stand out. Such considerations, for example, have already opened up a new front in the fierce battle between Sony Corp. and Microsoft Corp. for supremacy in the next generation of video-game consoles.

Craig Kaufman, director of community and outreach for AbleGamers Charity, which provides resources for gamers with disabilities, said the evolution is being driven, in part, by social media. Forums such as Twitter and Discord, an audio platform used by gamers, have led to more discussions about accessibility and a greater awareness of the issue among hardware and software makers. 

The major turning point, he said, happened in 2018 when Microsoft’s Xbox began selling its first adaptive controller—a long rectangular device with two large domed buttons on its face that can be specially customized by users. Microsoft promoted the product with a Super Bowl ad featuring a new slogan: “When everybody plays, we all win.” 

“That got a lot of the industry talking,” Mr.  Kaufman said. 

Other companies have since followed suit. 

In June, Sony and developer Naughty Dog came out with The Last of Us: Part II, a highly anticipated adventure game for the PlayStation 4 set in a post-apocalyptic version of the US that has been ravaged by a global pandemic. The game offered extensive features for players with disabilities, including those with low vision and colorblindness. 

Victor Branco, a Portuguese writer for Game Accessibility Nexus who has degenerative myopia, said The Last of Us: Part II has great text-to-speech capabilities, sound cues, and controller features, such as vibrating when an enemy is near.

“Not having that feeling that at any moment I will have to call someone to overcome a barrier that prevents me from completing a part of the game,” he wrote. “Not feeling tired in the eyes because I have to force them, I end up saving a lot of energy that I can use for what the game really intends me to do, enjoy the gameplay and story.” 

Tara Voelker, accessibility program manager and disability community lead at Xbox, said that such considerations need to be incorporated into the early stages of game development to be successful. “If you just thought about it from day one, it would have been super easy,” she said. “But if you forget about it, and you wait until you’re further down the product line, retrofitting it can be stupid hard.”

Karen Stevens, the accessibility lead for Electronic Arts Inc., said that it can be difficult to anticipate every obstacle ahead of time in every game. For major franchises like Madden NFL football or FIFA soccer, she said, feedback from consumers is invaluable. If one version lacks a certain accessibility feature and it gets pointed out by gamers with disabilities, it can be included in the next product. 

“Obviously, we’re a very large company—we make a lot of games,” she said. “So it’s very difficult to catch everything. But we know every little bit we try is a little bit better than it would be otherwise. It’s a journey. It’s not a one-step thing.”

Ms. Voelker said that the industry can become more inclusive by hiring more game developers (aka “devs”) with disabilities. “I talk a lot about the reason games are inaccessible is because we don’t have a lot of developers who have disabilities,” she said. “It’s kind of a Catch-22: You don’t have a lot of game devs with disabilities because a lot of games are inaccessible. So why would someone choose to go into game dev if they can’t play games?”

Mr. Fitzgerald, who has seen a lot of progress since he was a kid, said that he expects more barriers to fall in the years ahead.

“Newer developers are coming in with new ideas,” he said. “You know it’s these fresh minds in the industry, envisioning a better future in favor of everybody.” — Bloomberg

A robot tried to fix value investing and ended up buying Amazon

The top three holdings of the machine-guided fund in July were Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc., and Facebook Inc. Those are far from the kind of undervalued stocks typically favored by a value strategy. But to Qraft, it’s just value 2.0.

Artificial intelligence has been touted as a solution for everything from ending lines at the checkout to rooting out systematic bias in Wall Street hiring. It was almost inevitable that someone would suggest using it to fix value investing.

The strategy of buying stocks that appear cheap relative to their fundamentals has been struggling for more than a decade, but a South Korean money manager reckons its AI-augmented exchange-traded fund is the answer.

Qraft Technologies filed on Friday to create the Qraft AI-Enhanced US Next Value ETF, ticker NVQ. It says this strategy can revive the factor by estimating a firm’s intangible assets based on financial statements and patent databases.

NVQ posted a simulated return of 13% in the year through July, compared with minus 3% for the S&P 500 Value Index—but value traditionalists will be shocked by the composition of the portfolio.

The top three holdings of the machine-guided fund in July were Amazon.com Inc., Alphabet Inc., and Facebook Inc. Those are far from the kind of undervalued stocks typically favored by a value strategy. But to Qraft, it’s just value 2.0.

“Intangible assets have become a more important factor in the actual value of the company due to the development of information technology,” founder Hyungsik Kim wrote in an e-mail. “It is easy to tell which of the following is more important in measuring the value of Amazon: warehouses (tangibles) or automated logistics systems (intangibles).”

It’s the rallying cry for many remaining proponents of value: The factor isn’t dead, it’s simply plagued by outdated accounting rules that treat intangible investments such as research as expenses rather than capital.

As a result, knowledge-intensive firms end up with much lower book values and higher costs, which make them look more expensive than they actually are.

The new ETF’s eye-catching backtests also speak to the variety of methods underlying even the best-known equity factors. One study estimated there are well over 3,000 different ways to define a value strategy.

To some quant traders, that kind of performance-chasing flexibility suggests a lack of rigor that means failure in the long haul.

But Qraft can at least point to its AI system’s track record: Its $6.7 million multi-factor U.S. large-cap ETF (QRFT) has beaten both the S&P 500 and the iShares MSCI USA Multifactor ETF (LRGF) over the past year. — Bloomberg

South Koreans indulge in extreme staycationing and ‘home-camping’

SEOUL — This time last year Yoon Seok-min, his wife Kim Hyo-jung and their two children were holidaying in the Philippines, Vietnam, and Guam. A trip to Hawaii was on the cards for this summer.

Instead, as the global coronavirus pandemic has stymied overseas travel, the family, like other South Koreans, has turned to a new and extreme form of staycation: transforming their home into their favorite vacation spots.

Now, Kim and Yoon’s five-bedroom apartment in Yongin city, south of Seoul, is decked out with potted palms and rattan furniture, bringing the breezy feel of the tropics indoors.

There are even different locales—the couple’s bedroom is meant to resemble a Bali resort, while the living room has been designed on the lines of Hawaii.

“Since we can’t travel abroad for some time because of the coronavirus, we tried to bring those vacation spots to our home,” Kim said.

Yoon and Kim’s elaborate home makeover cost them at least 80 million won ($67,464). The couple runs a furniture business, but they are not alone in investing in their home, as social distancing forces people indoors.

Hanssem Co. Ltd., South Korea’s largest home furnishing company, said that the number of houses they have refurbished in the second quarter of 2020 tripled from a year earlier, leading to a 172% jump in its consolidated operating profit.

HOME-CAMPING WITH VIRTUAL CAMPFIRE
Other couples considering extreme staycation ideas need not look so far afield for inspiration.

“Home-camping,” where people set up camping gear and barbecue at home just as they would in the woods or on the beach, has also become popular in South Korea.

A recent spike in coronavirus cases and a monsoon that has lasted nearly two months, the country’s longest on record, have spurred Che Min-hee and her husband Lee Seung-yoon to convert their Seoul flat into an indoor campsite.

They’re now on their second weekend home-camping trip. With folding chairs, picnicware and at least 15 different types of twinkling lanterns, the couple settled in on a rainy Saturday evening to enjoy cooking gambas al ajillo, a Spanish garlic shrimp dish, and pasta on a portable stove.

A crackling campfire video streaming behind them on the television gave the scene an atmosphere of authenticity.

“We were supposed to go on a week-long trip to New York this summer, which we cancelled due to the prolonged coronavirus outbreak,” said Che. “Instead we spent that money on camping gear, which cost us around 10 million won ($8,405).”

Che and Lee had to wait two to three months to purchase their tents, folding table and stove, as South Koreans, normally among the top ten spenders on tourism globally according to the World Bank, splurged on equipment to make up for missed overseas trips.

Sales of camping equipment from April to mid-July jumped 51.6% year-on-year, according to South Korea’s retail giant E-Mart Inc.

South Korea called on people on Monday to avoid leaving home and to cancel any unnecessary trips, as it considers further tightening social distancing rules.

Lee says he fears these moves mean home-camping is the safest summer getaway this year.

The couple’s seven-year-old son Lee Ji-sung is not complaining.

“My friends seem to be just playing games, but it’s really nice that our family is doing something special,” Ji-sung said.

“I think it would also be good if we can draw trees on the wall.” — Reuters

Three-decade economic boom comes to a sudden halt in Vietnam

For the past three decades, Vietnam has known only good—or great—economic news. The nation’s consistent growth as an exporter, propelled by Communist leaders who began embracing market-oriented policies in the late 1980s, pushed many into the middle class.

The coronavirus pandemic changed all that. With garment companies seeing orders slashed and other sectors hit with sudden export declines, Vietnam’s workers are enduring the downside of being tethered to the global economy. The economic slowdown in the US and other markets Vietnam depends on for growth is being felt on the streets of Ho Chi Minh City and Hanoi, as well as in villages and tourist centers.

Le Thi Hoa, who sells pineapple and mango slices outside Ho Chi Minh City’s Ben Thanh Market in the heart of the commercial hub, is among those wondering where the good times have gone.

“Now people don’t go out,” said Hoa, 55, wearing a face mask and sitting on a plastic chair next to fruit baskets in front of a closed seafood restaurant. “I can only sell about a third of what I did before the epidemic.”

Vietnam has been one of globalization’s stars, transforming itself from a largely agricultural economy to a manufacturing powerhouse within the span of a few decades. With exports equivalent to the size of its GDP, Vietnam has seen its economy grow as fast at 7.02% in 2019. Now it’s bracing for the slowest growth in two decades, of 2.4% this year. During the second quarter, it expanded by just 0.36% from a year earlier.

“Vietnam has experienced a tsunami of good news over the past 30 years,” said Ralf Matthaes, managing director of Infocus Mekong Research, who has lived in the country since 1994. “This is the first time since joining the global economic community two decades ago that Vietnam is experiencing a significant economic downturn.”

Vietnam’s abrupt slump highlights the sweep of the epidemic’s financial fallout and how even countries that have been relatively successful in containing the virus are unable to avoid its economic afflictions. Such economies won’t be able to return to business as usual until the rest of the world does.

“It’s likely to be quite bumpy,” said Sian Fenner, a Singapore-based economist at Oxford Economics, which forecasts an 8% contraction in global trade for 2020. “Countries that are export-oriented will remain vulnerable.”

In April, Vietnam’s exports plummeted 14% from a year earlier, followed by a drop of 12.4% in May as global commerce came to a standstill, according to the Department of Vietnam Customs. For the seven months through July, exports rose just 1.5% compared with 8% in the same period last year.

TRADE TETHERED
Vietnam’s leaders, though, show no signs of reversing economic course after signing more than a dozen trade agreements in recent years and making the nation a magnet for foreign investment.

The government, grappling with an outbreak in the coastal city of Danang that has spread to 14 provinces and cities, has garnered international respect for its virus containment. Until July 31, the country hadn’t reported a single infection death. It confirmed 1,029 virus cases and 27 deaths as of Aug. 25 as officials employ tough anti-virus measures, while allowing manufacturing businesses to stay open.

Though Vietnam is in better shape than other economies in Asia, where the virus has been far more deadly and disruptive, its reliance on foreign markets and a growing tourism industry have given its residents a lesson in global volatility.

In recent years, Vietnam has become a key cog in the global supply chain. It has opened factories for companies including Intel Corp., Samsung Electronics Co., and LG Electronics Inc., as well as solar panel makers and garment producers. Vietnam’s exports in 2019 reached $264.3 billion—a fourfold jump since 2008. Average annual salaries rose from $1,154 to about $2,800 in that period, according to government data.

The pace of Vietnam’s shipments to the US, its largest market representing about 23% of exports in 2019, slowed in the first half of 2020 compared with the same period last year. The government reported a 14.6% increase in exports to the US, about half the rate of shipment growth in 2019.

Many of the sectors that have been hard hit, such as garments and textiles, employ millions of low-skilled workers. Samsung’s Vietnam unit, whose electronics products represented about 20% of the country’s total exports last year, revised its 2020 exports forecast to $45.5 billion, a $13.5 billion drop from 2019, according to the industry and trade ministry.

TOURISM WOES
Meanwhile, the tourism industry, which represents about 9% of the economy, had a 55.4% revenue drop during the first seven months of the year. Given the pounding to the manufacturing and hospitality industries, almost a third of the population—31 million workers—endured a financial fallout during the second quarter.

The global economic pain has been exacerbated by the virtual lockdown of the economy for much of April and restrictions amid the new outbreak.

With millions of assembly-line employees out of work, some local governments worry about the potential for social unrest, said Fred Burke, managing partner at the Baker McKenzie law firm in Ho Chi Minh City. He recalled that Minister of Planning and Investment Nguyen Chi Dung recently pleaded with Vietnam Business Forum members not to fire their workers but to hold on to them as long as they could.

Given the disruptions, consumer confidence is at its lowest point in 25 years, according to Infocus Mekong Research. Two-thirds of Vietnamese residents are deferring or deciding not to make big purchases. And 63% of Vietnamese are considering taking out loans as they seek financial lifeboats, the research firm said.

“Everyone is saving and we don’t go out so much,” said Bui Viet Nam, a 34-year-old executive with a Ho Chi Minh City garment manufacturer. “Incomes are going down and people are thinking about ways to earn more money through selling things online or getting a second part-time job. It’s a new world.” — Bloomberg

 

Need a visa to visit the US? Expect much longer wait times, officials warn

The US agency in charge of processing immigration applications said on Tuesday that it had avoided a planned furlough of 70% of its staff but warned that it still faced financial hardship that could result in some applicants experiencing longer wait times.

US Citizenship and Immigration Services (USCIS), the agency in charge of processing work permits, so-called green cards, and other visas, said that it had avoided furloughs planned for Aug. 30. But aggressive spending cuts the agency planned to put in place would impact all operations, including naturalizations, it said in a statement.

USCIS is dependent on fees from new immigration applications. The agency reported a 50% drop in fees in June due to less immigration during the novel coronavirus pandemic.

But immigration experts and former officials say even before the onset of the pandemic, the agency had seen revenues fall sharply as a result of slowdowns in processing and other limits placed on immigration applications.

Republican President Donald J. Trump has made curbing immigration a priority during his nearly three-and-a-half years in office.

USCIS Deputy Director for Policy Joseph Edlow warned in the statement there was no guarantee the agency can avoid future furloughs and called on the US Congress to ensure that the agency had sufficient funding for fiscal year 2021, which starts in October.

USCIS had asked for a $1.2 billion bailout from Congress in May to avoid the projected furloughs, but lawmakers pushed back, arguing that the agency had the funding it needed to continue operations through the fiscal year. — Reuters

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