Women Managers in Hong Kong: Personal and Political Agendas

Abstract

The proportion of women managers in Hong Kong has been steadily increasing in recent years. Hong Kong's ‘can-do’ spirit, education system and laws against sex discrimination probably have contributed to the increase. However, roles in the private (home) and public (work) spheres remain highly gendered. This has led to intense worak–family stress for women managers, some of whom also face sex discrimination at work, such as negative attitudes toward women, the old-boy network and sexual harassment. However, the overall level of awareness of sex roles and sex discrimination among women managers is low. Furthermore, women managers tend not to court open and direct confrontation. Instead, they tend to pursue individualistic personal coping strategies. Women managers rely on support from their extended family and hire domestic help to cope with work–family stress. Women managers also work hard to prepare themselves for a job move when they perceive or encounter sex discrimination. They tend not to make demands of their husbands, the workplace, or the government due to concepts about the private and public divide and about gender roles in these two spheres. We argue that political agendas which push for more flexible gender roles, state childcare and women- and family-friendly organizational policies are needed to bring more women into management at a faster pace.

Keywords:

• Women managers
• Hong Kong
• career
• family
• Chinese culture
• personal and political agenda

Acknowledgements

We thank the anonymous reviewers for their valuable comments, which helped us greatly to sharpen the focus of the paper.

Notes

 1 The situation has been found to be similar in the USA. Crystal (2003) examined the top five executives in each of 307 US companies with net sales of US$5 billion or more, and found that while only 5.2 per cent of them are women, they are paid the same as men

 2 Household commitment includes time spent on caring for household members, doing housework, and purchasing goods and services

 3 A homemaker is an economically inactive person who looks after the home without pay. The economically inactive population comprises persons who have not had a job and had not been at work during the seven days before the Census (Hong Kong Government, 2001 : 260)

 4 Names and some personal details of the interviewees have been disguised to protect their identities

 5 Hong Kong had 227,000 foreign domestic helpers in 2001 (Hong Kong Government, 2002 : 5, 93)

 6 Between 1988 and 1998, women accounted for 10 to 14 per cent of Hong Kong people who work across the border, rising to 18.4 per cent in 2001, and 21.2 per cent in 2002. More than 40 per cent of Hong Kong people working in the mainland are managers and administrators, and 36 per cent are professionals and associate professionals (Lee, 2003 : A5)

 7 From 1991 to 2001, the number of single-mother households increased by 95.5 per cent (Hong Kong Government, 2002 : 24)