Leadership: Women and Culture

What?

The issue that revolves around women and leadership is not new. Even though large parts of the world have begun to accept women leaders in a company or a country, there are still many boundaries (one of them is the glass ceiling - Draft, 2005; Yukl, 2006) to which a woman has to face to climb the organization ladder. I absolutely agree that women still have to face biasness and prejudice because of their gender, and worse – difference in culture. I have personally encountered these situations and I don’t like that feeling at all. The whole conventional thinking that men should be the breadwinner and women the homemaker is still rampant in many cultures, especially Asia where most of the world’s population comes from. In a team of people, it is sometimes inevitable that there would be potential conflict when it comes to gender and culture.

Future leaders of Malaysia from different cultural backgounds

So What?

In Malaysia, more and more women are earning higher positions in governmental and non-governmental sectors. In addition, more women are educated and they have higher and bigger goals in life – similar to many countries, Malaysia’s public universities have more female than male students. In a country with so many cultural differences, there are of course different thoughts and opinions to women becoming leaders. Thus, majority of higher leadership positions are still dominated by men. What surprises me most is the fact that women in the United States have considerably lower wages in the same position as men (Bureau of Labor Statistics). That is not fair at all! I believe that women will change and speak up for themselves in time to come. Similar for culture and leadership, international trade will improve and increase the need for cultural exchange and understanding, increasing the acceptance in cultural differences all over the world.

sodahead.com

Now What?

In a world with so many cultures and traditions, it is not easy to alter people’s perception towards women. After all these years, I think that women has made a significant change to the world – more and more women, including me, are getting proper and higher education. The good news is, women are also known to be better leaders, using more of transformational leadership. For both women and culture in leadership, acceptance and change towards the better is not impossible as long as there is tolerance and understanding.