Barriers to women’s participation in international management

Abstract

From the extant research in international human resource management it is evident that women are not progressing to senior international management positions at comparable rates to their male counterparts. Previous research has estimated that only 3 percent of expatriate managers are women. This paper argues that female international managers have to overcome many additional overt and covert barriers before being developed for international assignments. Based on an extensive empirical research study conducted with senior female international managers in a European context, the paper highlights a number of the barriers which the interviewees believed limit women's international career opportunities. The paper also highlights the implications of these barriers for international human resource management policies and practices.

Self-Initiated Expatriates: An Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis of Professional Female Expatriates

“…Since these academic contributions, barring research on the female spouse of an expatriate (Bikos, Ciftci, Guneri, Demir, Sumer, Danielson, De Vries & Bilgen, 2007), there has been a number of works done on women expatriates. These studies have included research on why there are so few women expatriates as international managers as well as barriers to their participation (Adler, 1994;Linehan, Scullion & Walsh, 2001;Paik & Vance, 2002;Fischlmayr, 2002), gender and personality differences between women and men (Guthrie, Ash & Stevens, 2003;Sinangil & Ones, 2003) as well as research considering the cross-cultural adjustment of female expatriates ( Selmer &Leung, 2003a;Caligiuri & Lazarova, 2002) and the success of female expatriates (Tung, 2004).…”

“…Alternatively, a number of research questions were generated to guide and focus the research process (Stahl, Miller & Tung, 2002;Fenwick, 2004). The research questions were developed based on an extensive review of the literature and cover areas of self-initiated expatriation (Inkson, Pringle, Arthur & Barry, 1997;Sutari & Brewster, 2000;Tharenou, 2003;Vance, 2005), women expatriates (Adler, 1994;Linehan, Scullion & Walsh, 2001;Paik & Vance, 2002;Fischlmayr, 2002;Crowley-Henry & Weir, 2007), global careers and career development (Thomas, Lazarova & Inkson, 2005;Bolino, 2007;Tarique, Schuler & Gong, 2007;Vance, 2005) as well as literature on issues of discrimination (Richardson, 2006;Tzeng, 2006 …”

Gender differences in expatriate adjustment

“…Yet, for a long time women have been just as likely as men to desire a foreign posting (Adler, 1984b). The reason for their under-representation often stems from prejudice against women by the decision makers back home (Adler, 1984b;Linehan et al, 2001b;Linehan, 2006) exerted through informal selection methods (Harris and Brewster, 1999;Harris, 2001;Harris, 2002). A number of studies have established that foreign women in many locations around the world have just as much chance for success as men (Westwood and Leung, 1994;Taylor and Napier, 1996a;Linehan and Scullion, 1996b;Caligiuri et al, 1999a;Caligiuri and Tung, 1999b;Linehan and Scullion, 2001;Linehan and Scullion, 2001a).…”

Women expatriates: A research history

“…Perceptions of home country managers remain reinforced by traditional profiles of typical male international executives and the choice of candidates is limited, wherever possible, to employees well known to the selectors (linehan and scullion, 2001b). the main obstacle to women's selection is therefore identified as their gender (linehan and Walsh, 1999b;linehan, scullion and Walsh, 2001) and yet gender is rarely acknowledged in international deployment practice (harris, 2004b).…”