Strong women with a soft heart : A minor field study about characteristics in the leadership of four women in the changing Thailand

This research was conducted from an anthropology narrative approach and based on semistructured conversation interviews with four Thai women who owned their own businesses and therefore were in a leadership position. The purpose was to get a picture of women leadership in the working life in Thailand. Focus was to find characteristics in their leadership, in the way they became leaders, their forces, how they thought of their leadership and which attitudes they met from society. This was analysed using the theory from Hofstede with five dimensions on cultures and also from democratic and authoritarian leadership. The result showed both similarities and differences. Similarities, such as the respondents being strong, hard working women running a family business and mostly using a democratic leadership and were forced to stand by themselves at the same time as they cared a lot about relations. It appeared that the Thai society was changing; there the women got a more prominent role in the working life, which embodied a more feminine culture with smaller power distances