Re-examining Women’s International Management Experiences: A Middle Eastern Perspective

Abstract

Globalization of business has reinforced the importance of international assignments for career advancement, both within and across organizations (Hartl, 2004). Yet, a key concern for Human Resource (HR) talent specialists is the under-representation of women amongst international and expatriate managers (Organization Resources Counsellors, 2002; Harris, 2004; Hearn, Jyrkinen, Piekkari and Oinonen, 2008). Though women in Western nations are increasingly represented in senior management positions, particularly in the public sector and government roles, they remain very under-represented in international management (IM) positions with recent research suggesting that women account for only 14 per cent of expatriate executives posted from the USA, and less than five per cent of those sent abroad from European companies (Van der Boon, 2003). Women from developing countries in Eastern Europe, Asia, South America, Africa and the Middle East (ME) are even less represented amongst international managers, even though their numbers are increasing at senior political and executive levels in their own countries (Walby, 2005).KeywordsMiddle EastUnited Arab EmirateHuman Development IndexUnited Nations Development ProgrammeFemale ManagerThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.