Racial Glass Ceilings, Gendered Responses: Taiwanese American Professionals’ Experiences of Otherness

Abstract

This article examines Taiwanese American professionals’ interpretations of the glass ceiling to illuminate the manifestations of structural inequality at the micro-level of social life. Data are based on 40 in-depth interviews in the Chicago metropolitan area. Findings suggest that racial inequalities are experienced through race relations. Ethnic cultures construct relational fences along racial lines that designate the place of each group in the racial hierarchy. Although frustrated and alienated by their marginalized position, women and men use different strategies to negotiate the meaning of being an “other.” Women act confrontationally to transgress social boundaries, while men adopt acquiescent and coalitional approaches to dwell in their designated territories. I argue that race intersects with gender and citizenship in shaping the salience of individuals’ social identities, which affects their responses to racial inequality in the white-collar workplace.

Notes

¹ Although the term glass walls is used in these studies, the factors overlap with what has been discussed in the glass-ceiling literature.

² In this study, distress is defined in a broad sense to refer to a variety of negative emotions, such as feelings of frustration, unhappiness, and stress (see Gu 2006 for an elaborated discussion on this concept).

³ The five informants who were not frustrated by the glass ceiling acknowledged that they lacked good social relations with white colleagues, which they identified as key for promotions. They were not distressed by this disadvantage, and they made statements such as, “I don’t want to be a manager, because I know my limitations,” “We’re Asian anyway; we cannot compete with whites, so there’s no need to feel frustrated,” and “My [white] boss has been very supportive, so I’m lucky [to be a manager]. Other Asians are not as lucky though.” One of these informants tried to fight the perceived unfair treatment but failed. She quit her job to demonstrate her feelings of injustice.

⁴ In the interviews, subjects used the terms, “Taiwanese,” “Chinese,” and “Asian,” interchangeably when describing their culture of origin. They also used “white,” “Caucasian,” and “American” in a similar way when referring to the mainstream (white) American culture.

⁵ Similar patterns may also be found when people compare themselves to out-group members (e.g., Irish vs. French; New Yorkers vs. Midwesterners).

⁶ The cultural aphorism, “Empty vessels make the most sound,” means when a person knows little, he or she needs to brag with crafty words to cover up his or her ignorance. In contrast, a person who is full of knowledge is usually quiet and reserved.

⁷ Among the 14 informants who socialized only with Asians in the workplace, nine reported distress. Among the 26 respondents who socialized with whites, 14 reported distress.

⁸ Here I do not intend to discuss gender and sexism in the white-collar workplace. Rather, I illustrate heterogeneity in subjects’ responses to their glass-ceiling experiences.

⁹ Like the male subjects in my study, Frank tried to discount his sense of racial injustice (Chou and Feagin 2010:92–93).

Additional information

Funding

The author would like to acknowledge the generous support of this study from Michigan State University, the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation, and Taiwan’s Academia Sinica.

Notes on contributors

Chien-Juh Gu

Chien-Juh Gu is Associate Professor of Sociology at Western Michigan University. Gu is the author of Mental Health among Taiwanese Americans: Gender, Immigration, and Transnational Struggles and has published articles on immigration, gender, culture, social psychology, and racial inequality. She has received the Gender Scholar Award and the Faculty Research and Creative Activities Award from WMU as well as the Junior Scholar Award from the Chiang Ching-kuo Foundation.