To Get Shipped Abroad
Women Must Overcome Prejudice at Home

This article was published in The Wall Street Journal, June 29, 1999

Author: Hal Lancaster

When it comes to corporate assignments overseas, women have a problem: They often can't get them. While women represent about half of the global work force, surveys indicate they count for less than 12% of the expatriate population.

Why? Because many male managers still believe women aren't interested in overseas jobs or won't be effective at them. The managers cite dual-career complications, gender prejudice in many countries and the risk of sexual harassment.

That's hogwash, according to researchers at Loyola University (Chicago). Their recent survey of 261 female expats and their supervisors concluded that women are just as interested as men in foreign assignments and just as effective once there. In fact, contends Linda Stroh, one of the researchers, the traits considered crucial for success overseas-knowing when to be passive, being a team player, soliciting a variety of perspectives-are more often associated with women's management styles than men's.

So how can women overcome these misconceptions? Several former female expatriates and international managers recommend these steps: Make sure managers know you are interested in going overseas, demonstrate your ability to be a cultural chameleon, and assure yourself strong family support. They note that the same advice applies for men, but that women, as is often the case, will probably have to work harder to achieve their goal.

Because they are often assumed to be less mobile, women need to be particularly vocal in expressing their interest during meetings and performance reviews. They have to find mentors with foreign experience, assignments that require international travel and project teams that include foreign divisions. And they must aggressively address managers' concerns, says Sven Grasshoff, vice president, international, for Citibank and chairman of the International Personnel Association, the study's sponsor. "If you have a dual career couple, what do you do with the male spouse?" he asks. "It isn't easy to get jobs for spouses."

That's why Jill Walsleben's foreign posting was truncated. The former Citibank manager who is now a director for Watson Wyatt Worldwide, a human-resources consulting firm, lasted just 18 months as vice president of human resources for the company's private bank for Europe, Middle East and Africa.

The biggest problem was her husband's inability to find work. "He was the only father in the parking lot of the international school, picking up children," she says. His frustration culminated in him saying, "I'm too young to be retired, I'm going home and I really hope you'll come." she recalls.

She advises women interested in overseas assignments to "look beyond the content of the job" to the impact on family and other relationships. "The earlier you can start conversations about this" with family she says, "the better equipped you are to have a thoughtful answer" when an assignment arises.

Maria Garcia-Kemp, an Ernst & Young partner, encourages women to go overseas early in their careers, when they have fewer encumbrances. "You don't want to have to turn an assignment down," she says. "It would be one of those, "See, I told you so.", kind of thing."

Katie Koehler, vice president of human resources for Marriott International's Caribbean and Latin American regions, got her foreign experience right after graduating from an executive M.B.A. program, accepting an offer from Marriott to work in Mexico City in 1996.

Being a woman in a Latin culture posed some challenges. At a breakfast meeting, a top union leader told a crude joke in Spanish. "I was being tested," Ms. Koehler says. "Will I understand, and how will I respond?" She responded with a stern look and a lifted eyebrow, subtly signaling that, while she didn't intend to make a scene that would embarrass him and abort their budding relationship, she didn't think the joke was funny. He approach apparently worked. "After that we had a good relationship," she says.

A manager at a large, high-tech company cautions women not to be swept away by the glamour of a foreign assignment. Before jumping at the job, be sure you fully understand the circumstances, she advises. After taking a general manager's post in Europe, she found herself being resisted by a staff that had had a bad experience with a previous female American manager. If she had gotten a full understanding of the job, she says, "I might not have been so eager to leap into the fray."

She strongly advises women managers overseas to seek out counterparts in similar situations. She made such a contact just before leaving. "It was three years too late," she says ruefully. She also suggests checking your boss's foreign experience. "A manager who has never had an expatriate assignment sometimes isn't as sympathetic as he or she could be," she explains.

In her case, reorganization pushed out her boss and left her without a job. "The new people don't know you," she says. Eventually, the company offered her a position similar to her previous U.S. post, but her career progress had stalled.

She now realizes she should have been developing new allies back home, returning periodically to interview in departments where she might eventually want to work. "I was naively expecting that my value and accomplishments would help me", she says.

< Return to the Press Room