The Changing Face of Women Managers in Asia

Citation

Moore, F. (2010), "The Changing Face of Women Managers in Asia", Personnel Review, Vol. 39 No. 1, pp. 153-155. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483481011007913

The Changing Face of Women Managers in Asia is a useful starting‐point for anyone looking for a good guide to the state of gender in management in the East Asian region, and the legal, economic, cultural and political factors affecting it. While this volume does not break much theoretical new ground, it is certainly useful for researchers and students looking for an overview of women and management in East Asia.

The object of the book is to give a comprehensive account of the status, gains, losses and transformations of women managers in nine East Asian countries (with Hong Kong counted as a separate country from China for the purposes of analyzing business culture), of a variety of sizes, economic types, and levels of development, at the present moment. Each country is given its own essay, with a fairly standard format throughout: each briefly considers the country's recent history of gender relations in management, discusses the current situation in depth, then provides two or more relevant case studies (most provide two, but the essay on Taiwan instead provides four, shorter, ones). Some of the case studies are of specific women, some of companies of note, and some chapters provide both types of case study. Extensive bibliographies are also provided, giving scope for future reading.

There is also an introductory essay by the editors providing an overview of the countries covered, and a concluding essay which attempts to draw some common themes out of the work, these being that women in Asia are seeing “shifts but also continuities” (p. 251) in their treatment at work and that education, the state and demographics play a key role in determining the situation of women, and a discussion of the problem of the assumption of homogeneity among women in different countries. As such, the book as a whole is a good starting point for people looking to learn more about the business systems of particular East Asian countries in general, not simply about gender.

The book's strengths lie, first, in the way in which detailed coverage is provided of some of the less‐well‐studied Asian countries, such as Vietnam, South Korea and Malaysia. The case studies are also very useful in providing examples of women's working experiences in East Asia, but, as the editors themselves note in their concluding essay, the reader should be wary of assuming that these women are necessarily “typical”; some, for instance the Singaporean Jennie Chua, CEO of Raffles International Holdings, have clearly had more success than the average woman in the area. The entries on better‐studied regions, namely China, Japan and Hong Kong, read more like summaries and catch‐up pieces, summing up the literature and explaining changes in recent years. The Japanese article is particularly useful in this regard, as the best‐known literature on gender in Japanese firms dates from the late 1980s through early 1990s, in the wake of the enactment of the Equal Employment Opportunities (EEO) Law, and it is interesting to see what has happened to women in the region since.

The volume does develop some continual themes of interest. In all the countries studied, equal‐rights policies and legislation have been enacted over the past forty years, and has had at least some positive impact on the lives of women managers. However, the impact of government activity seems, in general, to have been less than that of outside factors: for instance Yuasa notes in the article on Japanese women that rising age at marriage and increased numbers of childless women in the country are having more of an impact than the EEO, as have the changes in Japanese business practices since the end of the bubble economy in 1996. Unsurprisingly, also, the various authors uncover a number of cases of gender equality being enshrined in principle but not in practice: for instance, although many Japanese firms offer maternity leave, most of their female employees find that the social pressure not to take it is too great for them to accept the time off. More is often done on an informal level: one of the cases cited in Yuasa's article is of a Japanese company which, despite having no specific gender policies, is a much more female‐friendly environment than many companies which do have these.

It is also interesting that several of the successful Asian businesswomen considered here have succeeded by feminizing, even ultrafeminising, themselves, whereas the conventional wisdom in Europe and North America has generally been that women should minimize their feminine traits in order to compete successfully with men. However, more could have been done to draw out the implications: what is it that makes it a successful strategy? Why has it been more successful in Asia than in Europe? Also, I would be interested in exploring how this fits in with the experiences of European female expatriates working in East Asian countries. The book thus provides scope for future research on gender relations and female success strategies.

One critique I would raise is that I found myself questioning how unique any of the situations described in the book were to Asia. While certain articles (e.g Yukongdi, Lee and Rowley, Omar) imply that patriarchal social structures and philosophies make things particularly different for women in Asia, this is also true elsewhere in the world: while women in Thailand did not have access to education before 1901 (206), the situation was similar for most women in Germany (see Peukert, 1989). Similarly, women everywhere in the world are affected by a combination of demographic, economic and political factors, and so one would have hoped for more in‐depth discussion of what, if anything, makes the Asian situation unique (or, alternatively, what it tells us about women managers more generally).

There were also a few missed opportunities. The impact of religion is only seriously discussed in Omar's article on Malaysia, discussing the fact that Muslim women find it harder to succeed in business than their Hindu and Buddhist counterparts due to the restrictions on interaction with men placed upon them by their religion, and the impact of religion on women in the region more generally might have been interesting. It also surprised me that there was not more discussion of development economics, as at least some of the countries discussed are either developing or emerging economies, and there is a plethora of literature on women and development (for instance Coles and Wallace, 2005). Also, although it is outside the scope of the book's stated aims, it might have been good to acknowledge the fact that some Asian countries have large labour diasporas (for instance China, Vietnam and Thailand), and thus a number of women working overseas.

As well as being a good overview for academics looking to learn more about the region or for practitioners to have a summary of the current state of affairs, this book would be very useful as a teaching reference for international business and, particularly, international human resources classes, as it gives readers a good overview of gender issues in the region. The case studies would also be particularly useful for class teaching and for students doing self‐directed work – although this may seem to be faint praise, there is no shame in being a useful learning aid as well as regional summary. The volume also provides plenty of scope for further research for academics interested in exploring gender issues in the region, chiefly, what the Asian examples indicate about gender in management more generally, and whether comparison with women in other regions might provide wider lessons. Although this is not flagged up by the authors as a key finding, furthermore, the implication throughout the book that it is attitudes rather than formal policies which make the difference in terms of attitudes to women in the workplace, is a crucial idea which should undoubtedly be further explored.

In sum, this is a good book, which can be recommended as a useful reference guide and source of case studies. However, it is very much up to the reader to build on the information and ideas presented in the book, to take them further in theoretical and empirical terms.