Women in global leadership : Asian and African perspectives

Abstract: Although the number of women in the workforce has continued to increase, women are still underrepresented in terms of leadership roles. Some studies have suggested that women leadership is advantageous to organizations, and that women are more adept at managing multi-dimensional diversity than men. Accelerated globalization requires collaboration in groups of people characterized by multidimensional diversity. However, there is little empirical research on the development of this subject overall and on women as global leaders. This chapter summarizes the process on how women leaders develop a global mindset, deal with diversity, and how they are encouraged or discouraged to become global leaders from micro, mezzo and macro perspectives. Three topics are covered : 1. Qualitative studies based on different cultural perspectives (Japan, Indonesia, Korea, and South Africa) and disciplines (Business, Intercultural Communication, Management, Psychology and Sociology) providing readers with micro, mezzo and macro levels of analysis, 2. an overview of women as global leaders in academic institutions, business organizations, and multicultural contexts, and 3. examples of different types of diversity with a focus on gender, e.g., nationality, ethnicity, religion, economic class, and educational background. The common denominators of what encourages and discourages women from becoming global leaders were identified, so that these could be applied to different contexts. Further to this, the positive aspects of women global leadership, and how they have made contributions in specific contexts, were discussed. It is hoped that a multi-level and interdisciplinary analysis of this subject will contribute in some way to promoting women global leadership