International Human Resource Management Assignment :

WOMEN IN INTERNATIONAL MANAGEMENT

Don Minday
INTRODUCTION

International assignments are becoming, nowadays, a real necessity for the multinational companies that have subsidiaries or factories in many places of the world. A survey done in 1997 by ORC, shows that 63% of responding organisations were planning to increase their international assignments in Asia, and 54% also in Europe[1]. These data also illustrate that having an international experience is becoming very important for managers because it is a way used by international organisations to develop the future senior management.

While the demand for international assignees is increasing, the rate of women in such positions remains low. Indeed, the rate of female expatriates was about 2-3% in the early 1980’s (Caligiuri et al., 1999), and even if it has increased to reach between 14% and 18% in 2002 (GMAC-GRS and ORC Surveys) it is still low compared to the overall qualified female labour force. In North America, figures show that between 2 and 14% of global assignees are women, compared with 45% of women in management in domestic contexts (Adler, 1984a, 1994a and b; Florkowski and Fogel, 1995; The Conference Board, 1992; Tung, 1997). In Europe, a similar picture emerges; there are between 9 and 15% of women on global assignments compared with 26% in management (Brewster, 1991; Harris, 1998, 2002; ORC, 1997). At the beginning, the low proportion of women in international position could be explained by the historical scarcity of local women managers in most countries, but since the first study about women in global management done by Adler in 1984, a big change cannot be noticed, their representation in such positions increasing very slowly.

Many researches and studies have been done, trying to understand why women are still a minority in international management. Is it a fact that can be objectively justified?

In the following