of issues these women are dealing with.”
Among them are these challenges:
The maternal guilt that frequently derails Western women's careers is less onerous among female professionals in the BRICs and the United Arab Emirates (UAE), but they carry a heavy load of “daughterly guilt.” In countries like India, China, and the UAE, where notions of filial piety underpin cultural values and where demographers project an explosion in the percentage of the population over the age of sixty, elder care responsibilities are a ticking time bomb.
Although “extreme jobs”—characterized by extended work weeks, an always-on 24/7 culture, and intense performance pressure—are the norm among highly qualified and ambitious women worldwide, the average workweek for employees of multinational corporations (MNCs) in BRIC nations is especially onerous. Moreover, the demands of work have intensified over the past few years; more than a quarter of the women surveyed by the CWLP report working, on average, eight to eighteen hours more per week than three years ago, additional time that amounts to one to two extra workdays.
Workplace biases faced by professional women in these markets are overt and explicit. At least 40 percent of the women surveyed in Brazil, India, and China have encountered prejudice severe enough to make them consider scaling back their career goals or quitting altogether.
Biases in the workplace are magnified outside. In many emerging market countries, there is such strong social disapproval of—and occasionally outright danger for—women traveling alone that women often avoid industry sectors that require significant travel, such as pharmaceutical sales, and gravitate toward those based in urban, modern environs.
If we do not closely examine and understand the intricate web of pushes and pulls that can downsize ambition and stall promising careers, the full potential of this rich talent pool will remain untapped.
METHODOLOGY AND THEMATIC FOCUS
The ever-expanding body of work on the “BRIC phenomenon”—exemplified by such recent publications as Imagining India by Nandan M. Nilekani, The China Strategy by Edward Tse, Billions of Entrepreneurs by Tarun Khanna, or When China Rules the World by Martin Jacques—typically focuses on individual countries and adopts a broad-brush approach to the business or economic landscape. Analyses of the talent issues that are critical to the continued growth momentum of the BRIC economies remain primarily qualitative in approach and fragmentary in scope. Most of these studies, which rely exclusively on opinions gathered through interviews, are limited to business leaders and senior managers and focus exclusively on men.9 Without exception, even those that spotlight the war for talent and the looming skills shortage make no reference to a key segment of the talent pool: highly qualified, ambitious women. Indeed, Nilekani, in his well-regarded book Imagining India, devotes a mere four pages to the opportunities and challenges facing women, and Khanna, in his high-profile book Winning in Emerging Markets, fails to mention women at all.
This book fills a fundamental gap in the research. It is based on a robust combination of quantitative data collection and in-depth qualitative research gathered through the Center for Work-Life Policy's proprietary multipronged methodology.
Quantitative data was gathered through surveys of 4,350 college-educated men and women in Brazil, Russia, India, China, the United Arab Emirates, and, for comparison, nearly 3,000 respondents in the United States. Qualitative data was collected through focus groups, our Virtual Strategy Session online interview tool, and in-depth one-on-one interviews involving hundreds of high-echelon men and women across the targeted geographies. The research spanned interviewees of varying levels and experience, ranging from those new to the workforce to senior managers and business leaders. Data was collected between February 2009 and December 2010 and is, to our knowledge, unparalleled in scope and scale.
In addition to the BRIC countries, the UAE was included in the research as a lens into the talent landscape in the Middle East. Despite recent economic setbacks in business hubs such as Dubai, the Emirates continue to play an important role as a gateway to the region for many multinational organizations. Insights into the specific opportunities and challenges of managing talent in the UAE add a valuable dimension to the rich and complex themes we uncover for BRIC countries.
One other key point: the managers interviewed—male and female—work at a wide range of multinational corporations, including global giants with roots in China, India, and Europe as well as the United States. The insights and advice, therefore, are aimed at all multinationals and not only established Western corporations.
THE LESSON FOR GLOBAL COMPANIES
As companies position themselves for global expansion, one fact is clear: educated women in the BRIC nations and the UAE are already a force to be reckoned with. They are enormously ambitious and passionate about their work and are determined to play an ever-expanding role in the economic progress of their countries. Together with their female peers in other parts of the world, they are fundamentally altering the talent equation. But they will not be able to deliver their full potential until and unless their employers help them overcome the cultural limitations and organizational constraints that dampen their ambitions and derail their careers.
As global organizations build their presence in emerging markets, they have a unique opportunity to get it right—that is, to establish systems and processes for managing talent that allow highly qualified and ambitious women to flourish and contribute as fully as their male peers.
Some forward-thinking companies have already begun to experiment with their talent models and strategies. In Part Three: Action Agenda, we showcase thirty of these cutting-edge initiatives, spotlighting the issues each program addresses, exploring the challenges along the road to successful implementation, describing the solutions, and qualifying the results. We hope these initiatives—and, even more, the recognition of the forces thwarting ambitious women and the thoughtful responses—will seed more innovative practices among all employers.
Educated women represent the vanguard of talent management. Just as emerging markets can bolster a company's bottom line, the lessons learned in attracting, sustaining, and retaining the best and brightest women in those markets can enhance and strengthen an organization's operations worldwide. For all companies, both multinational and local, a deeper understanding of the professional needs and aspirations of educated women in developing markets is the surest route to continued growth, now and in the future.
Part One
The Changing Face of Talent
For ambitious, educated women in emerging markets, the future has never looked brighter. New opportunities beckon, calling for and rewarding their skills and their determination to use them. Employers who cultivate their talent find their efforts reciprocated with impressive levels of loyalty. We'll explore the unprecedented advantages emerging markets women bring to the workplace in Chapter 1.
But few companies can afford to be complacent about this rich lode of talent. We cannot emphasize enough the power of the societal forces tethering women's career aspirations, grounding their ambition and causing too many women to settle for a dead-end job or quit the workforce altogether. We'll describe the nature of these family-rooted “pulls” and cultural “pushes” in Chapter 2.
1
Unprecedented Advantages
When Maria Pronina graduated from Nizhni Novgorod Linguistic University in 1995, she expected to follow the conventional career track and become an English language teacher. Disappointed with the low salary, however,
