Executive Women in East Asia: Still Few and Far Between, But Growing in Number

By Lily H. Li (New York City)

Women make up only 10% of all the executives in South Korea and most corporations have only one or two female executives. And it is worse in the financial industry: Hye-Ryun Kang and Chris Rowley note in their case study, “Women in Management in South Korea: Advancement or Retrenchment?,” in Women in Asian Management that out of 710 executives in 140 companies only 1.1% in that East Asian country’s finance firms are female.

“Contrasting with worldwide trends, this time of feminization in financial areas,” observe Kang and Rowley, pointing to data that show South Korea’s ranking behind Canada (35%), the United Kingdom (33%), Mexico (22%), Hong Kong (21%), China (19%) and Egypt (11%) in terms of the percentage of female managers.

So why the disparity? To begin, culture. “Confucianism is often characterized as a system of social and ethical philosophy rather than a religion,” explains Judith A. Berling, a professor of Chinese and comparative religions at the Graduate Theological Union in Berkeley, California. “[It] built on an ancient religious foundation to establish the social values, institutions, and transcendent ideals of traditional Chinese society.”  And Confucian values support male superiority and female subordination, according to Vimolwan Yukongdi and Rowley in  their book  The Changing Face of Women Managers in Asia.

But is South Korea representative of East Asia? Most would say yes.  In “Asian Women Managers: Participation, Barriers and Future Prospects,” John Benson and Yukongdi contend that issues and problems confronting female managers in most cases “are more universal in nature.” The influence of Confucianism, which has been followed by the Chinese for more than two millennia, has extended to East Asia, particularly Korea, Japan and Vietnam, writes Tu Weiming. In addition, “many Asian cultures have high levels of collectivism. Collectivist cultures promote the preservation of traditional values and beliefs, which encourages conformity to social norms,” Yukongdi and Rowley note.

Overcoming Work-Life Balance Challenges

Female managers in East Asia also face work-life balance challenges as organizations rarely have family-friendly policies or child-care assistance in place. Human-resource executive Anne Nohara Abaya, who spent much of the late 1990s overseeing the rapid growth in Japan of General Electric Co.’s GE Capital, tells of one talented, mid-level female manager who tearfully requested that management stop promoting her because she had three children, she was responsible for running the household, and she simply couldn’t do it all. Abaya stressed that this is not unusual and that Asian professional women often struggle to balance their desire for career growth with expectations placed on them by their extended family, a tension which inevitably results in the limitation of the professional women’s long-term potential.

And there is nowhere for the professional women to turn as there are few professional development and networking opportunities for women. “Research conducted by FutureWork Institute for a large global client  indicates that women in a number of Asian countries believe more work can be done to develop internal talent. The pipeline trends outside-in, and mentoring and sponsorship of women lag behind that of men in India, Hong Kong, and Japan,” says Lily Tang, a consultant and coach at FWI, a woman-owned business enterprise and global network that models inclusion and new ways to work. “Foreign assignments and extensive travel required of executives with global responsibilities may be a factor in deciding to offer female candidates these opportunities,” she explains. “Related to, or perhaps more pointedly, as a result, not having women in the pipeline for executive positions is a frequently-cited challenge for many companies.”

Cracking the Boys’ Club Culture

Add the drinking/entertainment culture—the mandatory, after-hours bonding with co-workers over an abundance of alcohol present in most East Asian countries—and you have some high hurdles to overcome. But recently one South Korean woman challenged the required drinking and won. The graphic designer at an online gaming company had been forced to go  with her boss and co-workers on twice-weekly drinking bouts after hours. Although she had advised her supervisor that her limit was two beers, her boss continually coerced her into keeping up with the others. She did, but eventually quit, sued and won.

“In May, in the first ruling of its kind, the Seoul High Court said that forcing a subordinate to drink alcohol was illegal, and it pronounced the manager guilty of a ‘violation of human dignity,’” reported Norimitsu Onishi. “As an increasing number of women have joined companies as professionals in the past half decade, corporate South Korea has struggled to change the country’s thoroughly male-centered corporate culture, starting with alcohol.”

This ruling seems to be a signal of changing times. While the number of female executives is still lower that one would like, many people see signs of improvement. Susan Farwell, president of The Executive Communicator LLC, notes, “From my work in the last few years with multinationals operating in Asia, I believe that there is a sincere desire to promote local women. When I have facilitated leadership workshops or coached teams of middle managers being honed as future leaders in the region, I’ve been happy to see that the percentage of women in the group at the vice-president level was quite high, maybe 40%. Although the senior vice presidents or executives sponsoring the events were predominantly male, their comments and financial investment in these development opportunities assured me that they were giving more than lip service to the promotion of women.”

With more senior women in the workforce in Asia, the up-and-coming talent now have some role models from whom they can learn, adds Abaya, who has traveled extensively in the region. Having a role model would have helped that tearful midlevel manager who asked not to be promoted. “There has been genuine progress, and I’ve seen it personally over the past few years.”