Asian Women & Management

It's difficult to give a correct answer to these as I haven't seen any study on this, and what I can say is from my own experience which is obviously not much. What I've noticed is Management schools in India have more male students than female students, and the ratios are quite heavily tilted towards the boys. Maybe it's the first cause why not many Indian women hold managerial position. Secondly, another thing is, compared to boys, girls here tend to be soft spoken and sometimes speak too less (possibly cos of their upbringing). This places them at a disadvantage when it comes to discussions or making their own point.

Originally posted by: souro

It's difficult to give a correct answer to these as I haven't seen any study on this, and what I can say is from my own experience which is obviously not much. What I've noticed is Management schools in India have more male students than female students, and the ratios are quite heavily tilted towards the boys. Maybe it's the first cause why not many Indian women hold managerial position. Secondly, another thing is, compared to boys, girls here tend to be soft spoken and sometimes speak too less (possibly cos of their upbringing). This places them at a disadvantage when it comes to discussions or making their own point.

That's all that I could remember for now.

Originally posted by: souro

It's difficult to give a correct answer to these as I haven't seen any study on this, and what I can say is from my own experience which is obviously not much. What I've noticed is Management schools in India have more male students than female students, and the ratios are quite heavily tilted towards the boys. Maybe it's the first cause why not many Indian women hold managerial position. Secondly, another thing is, compared to boys, girls here tend to be soft spoken and sometimes speak too less (possibly cos of their upbringing). This places them at a disadvantage when it comes to discussions or making their own point.

That's all that I could remember for now.

There are differences between the leadership of women and men. Men believe and focus more to the work, the deadline and how the work needs to be done. They want to be followed and their orders to be carried out without thinking much about the feelings and personality of the surbordinates that are working under them and men's rules are also authoritative. When women work they tend to use feelings rather than focusing more to the works they focus more to the feelings of the employer for example when their employers have problems they want their employers to tell them, and how are they comfortable with their leaderships, with their works, rules and regulations. Women tend to be more lenient of the deadline of the job comaparing to men. And in the asian workforce, Asian people do not have their own motivations to work by themselves and they need to be ordered for them to work. If they give women the managerial positions in this case, the workers will not be productive and they will work in a laid back conditions, however research have shown that in countries such as Europe and the United States where the workers have their own motivations to work by themselves, giving women the leadership could make the workers to be even more productive than giving Men the managerial positions. On the contrary in countries like India, the other Asian countries, and Australia where people do not have their own motivations to work, giving women the managerial positions where they are more sensitive and tend to use their feelings in their works the productivity of the workers will be reduced greatly and this will also effect the company greatly. Giving women the managerial positions in these kind of situations will be a suicide towards the productivity of the workers and also towards the company itself. Many people still do not dare to give women these managerial positions because they do not want to risk it. The other significant reason of why still few women in Asia continent hold high managerial positions is because of the cultures that still stay stick and rooted to the people of Asia, the beliefs that no matter what happened Women are lower in status and powers towards Men and have to be their subordinates instead Men being the subordinate of Women. No matter how powerful they are, they are still below men and men have to be more powerful and hold higher status no matter in workplace, in society and many other places and thus there are still few women who want to take high responsibility because they are seen less capable than their males counterparts even when they hold the same position in workplace. Also in countries like India and China and many other countries which is still a bit traditional or where their cultures are still deeply rooted towards the people women are not capable of doing anything and are not supposed to take care of the outside world such as about finding money and many things else. Many people in this countries still think that women are supposed to do the things in traditional ways of life where their main aims in life are to marry into a good family, give birth to healthy children, take care of the children and the kitchen and members of the house.

Originally posted by: souro

Secondly, another thing is, compared to boys, girls here tend to be soft spoken and sometimes speak too less (possibly cos of their upbringing).

Originally posted by: Angad luver#1

really? do you mean in india?
lol cause i always found some people in india kinda outspoken 😳 not all but just the kids and teen's 😆😕😳

Originally posted by: return_to_hades

Well folks, currently I am taking a class: Management Gender and Race. Part of a project I am working on is creating a presentation on why there is a lack of Asian Women in executive management positions. So while I will get information for my project why not make a debate of it as well.😉

eshmaart gurrllll😆 using us for your project😆 Oh well, itnee bak bak yahan hum kartey hain. It's high time woh kisi key kaam hee aa jaye😉

Okay, I am restricting my scope to asian women's professional achievements in a western nation - since race was mentioned along with the gender criteria.

Why do you think Asian women do not make it to top management positions?

Currently, most asian women, who are at the age and with work experience to make it to the executive mgmt positions, are first generation immigrants. I am talking about women in their late 30's onwards. 1st generation immigrants have a myraid of problems in their kitty along with the race and gender issue that they need to tackle at work. They tend to have a decent enough knowledge of their field of expertise but lack the over all awareness to make for a well-rounded leader who understands what drives people from different races. In a nutshell, these women are the nerds - have all the technical knowledge but can's be seen as rainmakers - a quality that is extremely important for any leader in the top managemnt position.

Hopefully, this trend will change as the second generation asian women enter the workforce and come to a point where they are also valid contestants for the executive managemnet position. Growing up in west and going to grade school here does make them better equipped to understand the nuances of both cultures - eastern or western. For them, the fight would then be more to come over the gender bias than the race bias. Based on my personal experience here, the racial lines are blurred amongst youngsters here - the teens or people in early 20's. Best example is the current election of our African American president - young first time voters contributed significantly there. Forget the economy, the war, the dissatisfaction wioth Bush (to put it mildly😆), the fact that people did overlook the race factor tells us americans have come of age. Hillary, a better deserving candidate than Obama, still had to fight tooth and nail to overcome the gender bias and she is not even asian or black!



What factors contribute to it - Asian Culture, Gender Bias, Biases against Asians, Other factors?

The major factor that stands as a hurdle for most asian women in their forties is the Asian Culture - lack of support from their core group, the guilt that's instilled in her that she's no good if she makes work her priority, the well defined roles at home - after a lengthy day at work, go home and make the full meal as it is the woman's role, the accent, lack of personal grooming and professional packaging, inability to hold a conversation if the discussion topics do not include the field of expertise/family/discussions about how it was back-home/etc due to lack of awareness on western movies/art/music/sports etc , at times, is also a deterrent because it prevents her to reach out and make professional liasons with others in her field.

Galss celing exists for all women irrespective of their race and age. Race is a factor faced by AfricanAmerican women as well. Hence, the way I see it, it is the pre-dominant asian culture that does her in and that is where most of her disadvantage comes from which women of other races do not have.


If you are or know women in management or aspire to be managers - what sort of unique challenges do you face, how did you achieve it, when you failed what caused the failure?
How do you think companies can change to encourage Asian women to seek promotions and leadership roles?
What can women do themselves to overcome challenges?

Note: I am using Asian to refer to Subcontinent, East Asia and Middle East. Of course all three cultures are unique, but they get tended to be lumped together in gender studies. But on this forum we might be more subcontinent focused with some exceptions.

Haven't read views or anything but maybe because Asian Women by their OWN families are not encouraged to make it big.