Conclusions, Forecasts, and Recommendations

Introduction

Asian women are relatively recent entrants to corporate American workplaces, as has been discussed in previous chapters. Asian immigration to the U.S. has a long history, with significant participation by Asians in the business sector. Asians, both men and women, have a strong record of owning small businesses. However, their presence as employees of (large) corporations has gained significance only in the last few decades. Specifically, changes in immigration laws resulted in increased immigration of both trained professionals and students from Asian countries. Immigrant Asian women entered the workforce in different ways—directly, upon graduating with higher education degrees in the U.S., or indirectly after re-education/re-training following their entry to the country as (trailing) spouses.

Immigrants are not the only Asian women in the corporate workforce, however. Sufficient time has passed since the entry of the first wave of immigrants, and changes in immigration law have also affected the circumstances in which their daughters (and perhaps grand-daughters) have entered the workforce. Thus, it is possible to have multiple generations of Asian women in these workplaces. However, the acculturation processes of Asians indicate that the most significant differences are between the first and second generations. At present, these generations are likely the largest groups of Asian women in corporate workplaces.

Asian women have also been active in the U.S. economy in areas other than corporate workplaces. For instance, they work in healthcare, education, law, government, nonprofits, retail, and food services, among many other domains. They are small business owners and entrepreneurs in different sectors and industries of the U.S. economy. For instance, the 2012 Census revealed that there were more than 50,000 female-owned real-estate and rental businesses and 100,000 professional and scientific companies (Census, 2016). Overall, there were more than 600,000 women owned business and around 6.5% of these were owned by Asian American women (Smith, 2013).

The careers of organizational employees are different from those of businessowners or professionals (in areas such as education, law, and medicine). Employees’ work in organizations is determined to a large extent by their positions and is directed by their supervisors. In contrast to businessowners who do not report to anyone in their organization, employees are bound by the constraints of their position. The work of professionals also differs from that of typical organizational employees in that it is specialized to the extent of requiring certification or licensing and is subject to regulation. In contrast, the work of most employees in corporations is determined by the organization and is not subject to external regulations or requirements.

Finally, the corporate board members of an organization are (typically) not employees of that organization, aside from the CEO and certain other C-suite personnel (on occasion). However, the representation of Asian women at the corporate board level is an important statistic to track since board positions can be highly influential. (There is data available regarding the board composition of Fortune 500 companies, in contrast to the lack of data on Asian women’s representation at industry or company levels.) Over the period 2012–2018, the number of Asian women board members in Fortune 500 companies increased from 13 to 17 (Harvard Law Forum, 2018). In 2018, there were seventeen Asian/Pacific Islander women board members in Fortune 100 companies (Deloitte, 2018). However, in this book we have not concentrated on board membership, as these figures represent Asian women who have already had successful careers. Rather, our focus has been on women in entry and middle organizational levels.