Asian Women Shy Away From Limelight

  

The advancement of women is a strategic talent priority not only for many companies, government and nations across the world.

Our IBM Chairman and CEO, Ginni Rometty, shared at The Clinton Global Initiative's forum on Re- imagining Impact: "I would define diversity differently now…It is really about Engagement…Engagement means giving people the freedom to contribute in any way they are comfortable, and when we do that, we unlock entire segments of the population".

At IBM, we have a Diversity Leader in our human resource department.  For the International Women’s Day or Week, the team led a first ever social discussion on Diversity, an online community chat to encourage employees to contribute their thoughts, best practice stories, innovative ideas and recommendations on two topics: “You are What You Share” and “Create an Irresistible Work Experience”. Our Singapore Managing Director Janet Ang also hosted a panel of distinguished women to share with us their journey in going digital for work and for personal life.

 

“You are what you share” is about leveraging the power of social to build digital eminence and through this, a personal brand.  Research suggests that women in general, have been less inclined to do personal branding, which impacts visibility and networking internally and externally.

Technology - Old Boy’s Club. Unicorns - New Boy’s Club.

As interviewed by USA Today, studies show that while women make up 42% workforce, tech industry has only 24% women representation. Tech is another old boys' club. Elizabeth Caudle, East Coast regional director for Girls Who Code leads an educational group seeking to expose 1 million young women to computer science education by 2020. 

IBM’s Sandy Carter says that women are natural techies in that social networking can be a strength in the workplace. A study by Catalyst showed that companies that are more diverse – with more women and minorities – deliver about 1 35% higher return on equity and a 34% return to shareholders.

A Fortune analysis showed that the Fortune 500 is led mostly by men. Only 25 Fortune 500 companies have a woman as CEO.

A new analysis by Fortune also uncovered that 60% of the US unicorn companies have all-male boards compared to 5% of Fortune 500 companies.  These include the most celebrated brands like Uber, Snapchat, Tinder and Airbnb. 

Asian Women Are More Reserved Than Men...

Most women posted that they are more reserved and unable to get the same visibility as their male counterparts. This was especially more pronounced among Asian women.  One woman manager said, “I am an Asian woman, and the culture here generally is that we are always not the ones to put up our hands first when questions/comments are sought. We tend to only answer if we are called upon, even though we may have rich views to share. So with the (social) platform, we can encourage each other, we can build more self-confidence hearing from our fellow woman friends how they over-come such challenges.”

Another women professional said “ Asian woman are often associated to being reserve, less vocal about their opinion and even shy away from recognition; take for instance when a recognition is given to woman publicly in a team setting you would often hear, ah... it's the team's effort where if it's a recognition given to our male colleague you could see him standing tall and taking the credits. We should encourage our fellow women colleagues to take the stage and accept the compliment. Just say thank you very much for the recognition and shine in your achievements and also comment about what the team has done.”

I shared on-line as well as at the Singapore event that “I too am an Asian woman and a Manager in a mainly male-dominated division in IBM Systems Hardware team.  We tend to be "humble" and "not speak until spoken to".  Last year, when I was involved in community work in different countries, I found that a lot of social enterprises from CEOs to politicians in ministries to the youths were really listening and learning enthusiastically to what I had to share from my personal experience from studies, professional career development to my values in life.  In many countries, woman who have not spoken up, do make an impact when they speak up!  

Building A Social Profile In Two Months!

I also shared that I was inspired to start building my social profile last year on Blogspot (http://annephey.blogspot.sg/),  to share about my community work and with the youths.  After half a year in September, I decided to get active professional social profile on LinkedIn (https://www.linkedin.com/in/annephey).  In just 2 months in November, LinkedIn awarded me as the #2 Social Seller out of their Top 100!  So, ladies share your valuable experience as you may never know when it can encourage someone or advice for their development.  When we speak, people listen. When we put our mind to it, we are unstoppable! 

 

 

Get Inspired By Women in Leadership!

IBM Women in Technology has  a great sharing of insights during this Celebration of International Women's Day on youtube: IBM Women In Technology

I note that we are missing the Asian women in this video.  However, judging from the impressive panel and audience that we had at the IBM International Women's Day event, we had many women leaders from finance, human resource, consulting, banking and manufacturing in Singapore who inspire us.

Women should build a network with mentors and peers to grow and take control of our career.  We can do better than our counterparts in the west.

Abridged version on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/asian-women-shy-from-limelight-anne-phey-innovator