Asian-Americans are frequently perceived as successful, but this is not always the case, especially for Asian-American women.
According to an analysis done by McKinsey, while Asian Americans are heavily represented in corporate occupations, their presence reduces significantly at the board of director level, with Asian American women seeing the worst decline at 80%.
Asian American women face exceptionally high barriers to success as a result of being both people of color and women. Based on the analysis, Asian women receive one promotion for every two Asian men at the senior management level and one promotion for every six Asian males at the C-suite executive level.
According to Margaret Chin, a sociologist and the author of “Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don’t Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder,” Asian women are frequently hypersexualized and further stereotyped as overly feminine, obedient, and submissive, which prevents them from being considered for leadership positions.
Nadia Kim, a professor of sociology and Asian and Asian American studies at Loyola Marymount University, believes that if Asian Americans, particularly, women are not seeing themselves represented in upper management, it would be hard for them to be confident about their own abilities.
Michael Chui of McKinsey said that a suitable approach would be for others in positions of leadership to take a more aggressive role in sponsoring Asian Americans in the workplace by creating more opportunities for them, in addition to improving data collection to identify inequities.
