Women leadership in Vietnamese higher education institutions: An exploratory study on barriers and enablers for career enhancement

Abstract

Barriers and enablers that the women leaders experience in the higher education (HE) sector have been a widely researched topic in many developed countries. However, the research on this topic is very limited in developing countries such as Vietnam. Despite the Gender Equality Law introduced in 2006 by the Vietnamese government to promote equal opportunities to women and also reducing the Gender Gap Index score of 70% in Vietnam, there are few women in leadership roles in several sectors including HE. This explanatory study has been conducted in nine universities in Vietnam to understand the barriers that prevent women from taking up leadership roles and the factors that motivate them in their career advancement to become a leader. The qualitative study was conducted with 21 participants (19 women and two men) working as senior leaders, middle managers, and lecturers in these universities. The study found that the main barriers in women’s career enhancement were work-life imbalance, subordinates’ perceptions regarding women leaders, social networking, and personal factors. The factors which motivated women leaders to advance in their career path were continuous family and mentor support, changing mindset of employers, and potential leadership competency of women leaders. The findings of this study would be beneficial for the Vietnamese HE institutions to determine policies and programs, which can support women’s career advancement to leadership roles bringing diversity and inclusion at these institutions. The results might be a steppingstone to achieve the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 5 on gender equality in Vietnam, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing economies.

Review of research for two decades for women leadership in higher education around the world and in Vietnam: a comparative analysis

“…Hence, the barriers faced by the women in Asia might be of different intensity as compared to women in the western countries. The U-shaped employment curve indicates stable employment seen in the women in western societies (Cho et al, 2017;Maheshwari and Nayak, 2020), as opposed to the M-shaped employment curve in Asia, which suggests more breaks in the career (Draudt, 2016, Maheshwari andNayak, 2020). The comparison of barriers and enablers for women leaders in western and Asian countries is provided in Table 3.…”

“…Although, Asian countries are making efforts to bridge the gap, as per the World Economic Forum (2020) report, it will take around 71 years to bridge this gap in Asia completely compared to 99.5 years to close the gender gap globally. The recent study done by Maheshwari and Nayak (2020) in Vietnam reported that there is changed positive mindset of the young male regarding the women leadership, and this might be seen as a positive sign for the future women leaders in HEIs in Vietnam, as there is around 63% of youth population below 24 years in Vietnam (OECD, 2017). Women bring their own expertise and different skills.…”

Gender equality management in modern company management in era of globalization

“…The factors which motivated women leaders to advance in their career path were continuous family and mentor support, changing mind-set of employers, and potential leadership competency of women leaders. [19] It is also very important to notice the relevance of the automat ability of male and female jobs, the number of women and men in occupations with low and high risk of automation. [20] Beth Turnbull et al (2020) explores and integrates existing theories of gender hegemony into a multidimensional, multilevel, relational and intersectional perspective for exploring internal and external relations within and between hierarchical configurations of femininities and masculinities.…”

Mujer en la Gobernanza Universitaria y sus principales barreras

“…Las investigaciones sobre cómo abordar las cuestiones de género han aumentado recientemente y han investigado las barreras para que las mujeres accedan a puestos de liderazgo en las universidades (Aslanargun, 2013), sin embargo, aún persiste su baja participación. Aunque las mujeres directivas tienen altos niveles de educación y deseo de progresar en sus carreras académicas, sigue siendo cierto que pocas alcanzan el mismo estatus que sus homólogos masculinos, incluso en las economías avanzadas (Adu-Oppong, et al, 2017;Maheshwari y Nayak, 2020).…”