NCWNZ was invited and funded to attend the Women Power Forum by the Hong Kong Federation of Women (HKFW). Suzanne Manning and Kerri Du Pont represented NCWNZ at this Forum which was held on 1-2 April 2026.
The Women Power Forum is a biennial event organized by the HKFW and the Golden Bauhinia Women Entrepreneur Association. It focused on women’s empowerment, bringing together leaders from different sectors in Hong Kong, China, and internationally for networking and sharing ideas. This was the 4th Forum, the first one being in 2019.
The Forum itself was a half day of continuous speakers, with the overarching theme of 'Women across nations: Unite to prosper' and focusing on areas of business, technology and social innovation, and arts and culture. Digital technology, and a focus on empowering individual women in business seemed to predominate. There was a wide range of speakers, including government ministers, business leaders, philanthropists, Olympic athletes, leadership coach, scientist, and social innovators. They were honoured to have as a speaker Huang Xiaowei, a top ranking Chinese official.
After the half-day Forum, an extended one-and-a-half-day programme of visits allowed ongoing networking particularly with the organisers and the international visiting delegations. We met women from Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Mongolia, Cananda and Hungary, among others. Many business cards were exchanged!
The HKFW is a similar organisation to ours in terms of membership and purpose. They have around 2,000 individuals and 89 organisations as members, and they are engaged in education, welfare, connecting across organisations and participation in international conferences and forums. Their founding President, Peggy Lam, was instrumental in the campaign to include Hong Kong in CEDAW. We met Peggy – at 98 she is still a force to be reckoned with.
One of the groups we learned about was The Golden Bauhinia Women Entrepreneur Association. Golden Bauhinia as an organisation is more specific, focused on women entrepreneurs, and is probably more akin to Business and Professional Women (BPW). In fact, there were people representing BPW from Singapore (and possibly other places) at the Forum.
The NCWNZ Board will now be considering how to make best strategic use of this unexpected opportunity in the future.
To read more articles from The Circular (March-April 2026) issue 656, click on the tag below.