六级阅读资料 Women managers in Asia: Untapped talent.

Women managers in Asia: Untapped talent.

Sexism is rife in Asia. That creates an opportunity for non-chauvinist firms. IN THE West, women typically make up 10-20% of upper management and company boards. They are relatively lucky. A report from McKinsey, a consultancy, shows that Asian women lag far behind.

There are exceptions. In Australia womens share of board and executive-committee jobs is roughly on a par with that in America and parts of Europe. Singapore too has a large number of women in senior management . But elsewhere the picture is mostly dire, and not necessarily because the countries concerned are poor. In Japan and South Korea, both rich, women are about as likely to sit on boards as men are to serve tea. One reason why so few women in Asia get plum jobs is that in most countries far fewer of them are in the workforce than in the West, where their labour-force participation rate is usually around 60-70%. In India only about one woman in three has a formal job, though millions sweaton farms and in family businesses. Education is unequal, too. In 2009-10 only 10-15% of students entering the elite Indian Institutes of Management were female. But even in Asian countries where plenty of women leap from college onto the corporate ladder, they do not climb as high as men. The most common reasons given are much the same as in Europe: the double burden of work anddomestic responsibilities; the requirement in many senior jobs to be always available and free to travel; womens reluctance to blow their own trumpet; and the scarcity of female role models. In Asia, an additional hurdle is the lack of public services to support families, such as child care. So is it just a question of waiting until Asia catches up with the West? The McKinsey reports authors, Claudia Sssmuth-Dyckerhoff, Jin Wang and Josephine Chen, think it is not as simple as that. Having studied 744 large companies and quizzed 1,500 executives in ten Asian countries, they conclude that, unlike their Western counterparts, Asian senior managers are not very interested in the subject. Some 70% of them did not see gender diversity as a strategicpriority. The McKinsey authors think such managers are misguided. They point to companies in Asia that have done well out of recruiting lots of women, such as Shiseido, a Japanese cosmetics company , and Cisco, an American technology firm which snaps up Asian female talent. It is one of several Western firms that benefit from Asian sexism, in that it is easier to recruit good women when their compatriots ignore them. A study in 2011 by Heidrick Struggles, a headhunter, found that a third of Asian executives were worried about being able to attract and retain the staff they needed in the next two years.

Women could help fill the gap. In a book published last year, Winning the War for Talent in Emerging Markets, Sylvia Ann Hewlett and Ripa Rashid found that, despite cultural constraints, women in developing countries were increasingly well qualified. Judging by what they told pollsters, they were also moreambitious than Western women, and more loyal to their employers than men. Citing studies suggesting that firms with more women at the top perform better, the McKinsey report urges Asian companies to do more to harness female talent. It will be a hard sell, but according to Ms Wang, Five to ten years might do it.

亚洲的女性高管：尚待开发的人才。 性别歧视在亚洲大行其道。这为非大男子主义至上的企业创造了机遇。 在西方，女性通常占据10-20%的公司高层和董事会职位。相比之下，她们是幸运的。来自麦肯锡咨询机构的报告显示在此方面，亚洲女性大大落后了。

例外也是有的。在澳大利亚，女性在董事会和执行领导层所占份额与美国和欧洲部分水平一致。新加坡也有大量女性工作在高级经理职位上。但在其他地方，女高管的境地就多半是岌岌可危的了，也不一定，都因为相关国家很穷。在日本和韩国这两个富裕国家，女子就很可能只是给坐在董事会里的男人们倒茶端水，而不是一起议事。 很少有亚细亚女性会得到称心如意的工作，一个原因是多数亚洲国家里，在职场中仅有极少数的女子，而在西方女性参与劳动率一般大致在60-70%。在印度，三个女子中大约只有一个有正式工作，虽然有数百万的女性在农场和家庭事务上挥洒汗水。教育也是不平等的。09到10年度，进入印度精英管理学院的学生中仅有10-15%是女性。但即使是在那些有众多女性能从大学走上职业之路的国家，她们也没攀登到男性所能达到的高度。 与在欧洲一样，最为普遍也是肯定的原因是：职场与家庭责任的双重重担;高管职位随时随地的出差要求;女性对自卖自夸的不情愿;以及女性榜样的稀缺。而在亚洲，另一个障碍是缺乏诸如孩童看护一类的，援助家庭的公共服务。 所以，这个问题只是：等待亚洲赶上西方的脚步吗?麦肯锡报告的作者，Claudia Sssmuth-Dyckerhoff，王进和乔瑟夫?陈，认为问题不是那样简单。在研究了774家大公司和问卷调查了1500位来自十个国家的高管，他们总结出，不像西方的同僚，亚洲的高级经理人们对这个话题兵不感兴趣。他们中大约70%不认为性别多样性是一项当务之急。 麦肯锡报告的作者们认为这些经理人们是错误的。他们给出了一些在亚洲从任用女性中获利，并取得成功的公司，如资生堂，一家日本化妆品公司，以及思科，一家美国抢夺亚洲女性人才的科技公司。这只是从亚洲性别歧视中获益的西方公司中的一家，当女性的同胞们都忽略排斥她们的时候，聘用她们就非常容易了。 一份2011年来自Heidrick Struggles人才猎头公司的研究发现有三分之一的亚洲公司高管担心能否在未来两年内吸引和维持所需的员工数量。

女性有助于填补这个空当。 一本去年出版的书，《在新兴市场中赢得人才战争》之中，Sylvia Ann Hewlett 和 Ripa Rashid发现，尽管有文化限制，发展中国家中具有学历、能胜任的女性们越来越多了。由她们对调查者所言来判断，她们比西方女性更有抱负，也比男性更忠诚于老板。 麦肯锡报告援引了数篇研究，它们都暗示高层有更多女性的企业在市场上表现更好，所以它催促公司们在利用女性人才方面更进一步。这将是个很难有市场的主意，但据王女士的说法，五到十年也许会有很好的效果。