Shearman & Sterling’s Hong Kong office celebrated International Women’s Day 2019 on March 8 with a series of internal events and activities.

Using this year’s campaign of #BalanceforBetter, which represents a call to action for driving gender balance across the world, our lawyers and office staff showed their commitment to help build a more gender-balanced world by taking pictures with selfie cards downloaded from the International Women’s Day website. Lorna Chen, Head of Greater China and member of the Global Diversity & Inclusion Task Force hosted a lunch held for secretarial staff and Friday afternoon drinks for the Hong Kong office.

At the afternoon drinks, Lorna gave a speech on the importance of promoting female empowerment all year round beyond International Women’s Day, and a group photo was taken with attendees in their #BalanceforBetter “hands out” pose. Attendees also enjoyed watching Pixar’s animated short film Purl, which tackles the issues of workplace inclusion and diversity with clever humor.

The International Women’s Day celebrations are part of a series of planned events to support gender diversity with colleagues, clients, alumni and other professional women in Greater China. In December 2018, Shearman & Sterling hosted a Supper Club for Women in Law in Shanghai for female in-house counsel from a wide range of multinational corporations.