IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/eee/bushor/v56y2013i4p483-490.html

A few good women at the top: The China case

Author

Listed:
  • Liu, Shimin

Abstract

In the face of global economic downturns, an increasing number of women are rising to top management positions. What happened in China seems to resonate with the trend in the West. In China, only one in four have made it to the top management level, with a majority taking the position of chief operating officer, chief financial officer, and human resources director. In China, 53% of women are caught in sticky-floor situations and never advance beyond lower-level positions in the workplace. What holds women back from climbing up the corporate ladder? This research explores the stories of women executives in China's corporate world based on an exploratory study. We investigated the following questions: What are these women's beliefs about and responses to the glass ceiling? What personal, social, and organizational constraints undermine their capacity to play a part in a traditionally male-dominant world? How did these women make their way to the top? And, what factors are unique to Chinese women managers’ career advancement?

Suggested Citation

  • Liu, Shimin, 2013. "A few good women at the top: The China case," Business Horizons, Elsevier, vol. 56(4), pages 483-490.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:56:y:2013:i:4:p:483-490
    DOI: 10.1016/j.bushor.2013.04.002
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0007681313000463
    Download Restriction: Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1016/j.bushor.2013.04.002?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to

    for a different version of it.

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Krishnan, Hema A. & Park, Daewoo, 2005. "A few good women--on top management teams," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 58(12), pages 1712-1720, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yunxia Zhu & Alison M. Konrad & Hao Jiao, 2016. "Violation and activation of gender expectations: Do Chinese managerial women face a narrow band of acceptable career guanxi strategies?," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 33(1), pages 53-86, March.
    2. Shao, KaiChao & Ma, Ruixue & Kamber, Joseph, 2023. "An in-depth analysis of the entrepreneurship of rural Chinese mothers and the digital inclusive finance," Telecommunications Policy, Elsevier, vol. 47(7).
    3. Tingting Zhang & Jing Chen, 2025. "A Contingency Model of CEO Gender and Corporate Innovation: The Moderating Effects of Firm Age and Firm Size," SAGE Open, , vol. 15(3), pages 21582440251, August.
    4. Yang, Inju & Li, Lily Ming, 2018. "‘It is not fair that you do not know we have problems’: Perceptual distance and the consequences of male leaders' conflict avoidance behaviours," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 36(1), pages 105-116.
    5. Fang Lee Cooke, 2023. "Changing Lens: Broadening the Research Agenda of Women in Management in China," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 184(2), pages 375-389, May.
    6. Zhongwu Li & Dewei Kong, 2024. "Is one's happiness associated with their spouse's income, and vice versa? Insights from China," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 105(1), pages 81-99, January.
    7. Yu Wang & Jie Ma & Tienan Wang, 2023. "Do all female directors have the same impact on corporate social responsibility? The role of their political connection," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 40(3), pages 1047-1074, September.
    8. Ghulam Nabi & Song Wei & Ghulam Ghous, 2016. "Do we have proportionate gender in policy making? a study based on key government institutions of saarc region," Interdisciplinary Description of Complex Systems - scientific journal, Croatian Interdisciplinary Society Provider Homepage: http://indecs.eu, vol. 14(1), pages 39-51.
    9. Wei Wan & Hong Wu & Hui-Ling Hu, 2024. "Entrepreneurial Empowerment through the Internet: A Qualitative Research on Chinese Women Entrepreneurs," SAGE Open, , vol. 14(3), pages 21582440241, August.
    10. Yu Wang & Xiaoyi Luo & Tienan Wang & Die Hu, 2021. "Go beyond tokens: Number and type both matter," Business Ethics, the Environment & Responsibility, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 30(4), pages 639-656, October.
    11. Youlai Zeng & Lilan Zhu & Qianqian Kang & Shuping Yang, 2025. "The relationship between gender stereotypes and job satisfaction among female employees: the role of years of education and subjective well-being," Humanities and Social Sciences Communications, Palgrave Macmillan, vol. 12(1), pages 1-12, December.
    12. Zhiyang Liu & Guixing Wu, 2022. "Gendered motives towards hybrid entrepreneurial intentions: Empirical evidence from China," International Studies of Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(1), pages 36-64, June.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jaber ABDALLAH & Siham JIBAI, 2020. "Women In Leadership: Gender Personality Traits And Skills," Business Excellence and Management, Faculty of Management, Academy of Economic Studies, Bucharest, Romania, vol. 10(1), pages 5-15, March.
    2. Francisco Díez-Martín & Giorgia Miotto & Cristina Del-Castillo-Feito, 2024. "The intellectual structure of gender equality research in the business economics literature," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 18(6), pages 1649-1680, June.
    3. Michael Adusei & Samuel Yaw Akomea & Kwasi Poku, 2017. "Board and management gender diversity and financial performance of microfinance institutions," Cogent Business & Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 4(1), pages 1360030-136, January.
    4. Zulkufly Ramly & Nurusysyifa Nordin, 2018. "Sharia Supervision Board, Board Independence, Risk Committee and Risk-taking of Islamic Banks in Malaysia," International Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, Econjournals, vol. 8(4), pages 290-300.
    5. Nhat Minh Tran & Thu Thuy Nguyen & Thi Phuong Linh Nguyen & Anh Trong Vu & Thi Thanh Hoa Phan & Thi Hong Tham Nguyen & Ngoc Diep Do & Anh Tuan Phan, 2022. "Female Managers and Corruption in SMEs: A Comparison Between Family and Nonfamily SMEs in Vietnam," SAGE Open, , vol. 12(1), pages 21582440221, March.
    6. Alicia R. Ingersoll & Christy Glass & Alison Cook & Kari Joseph Olsen, 2019. "Power, Status and Expectations: How Narcissism Manifests Among Women CEOs," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 158(4), pages 893-907, September.
    7. Julia Heidemann & Andrea Landherr & Anna-Luisa Müller, 2013. "Berichterstattung über Frauen in Führungspositionen — eine Analyse der DAX 30-Unternehmen," Schmalenbach Journal of Business Research, Springer, vol. 65(5), pages 488-512, September.
    8. Tien Quang Tran, 2020. "Identifying Female Leadership and Performance in Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises in a Transition Economy: The Case Study of Vietnam," Asian Economic and Financial Review, Asian Economic and Social Society, vol. 10(2), pages 132-145, February.
    9. Sheila Ellwood & Javier Garcia-Lacalle, 2015. "The Influence of Presence and Position of Women on the Boards of Directors: The Case of NHS Foundation Trusts," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 130(1), pages 69-84, August.
    10. Steffen Keck & Wenjie Tang, 2018. "Gender Composition and Group Confidence Judgment: The Perils of All-Male Groups," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 64(12), pages 5877-5898, December.
    11. Périlleux, Anaïs & Szafarz, Ariane, 2015. "Women Leaders and Social Performance: Evidence from Financial Cooperatives in Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 437-452.
    12. Hmieleski, Keith M. & Sheppard, Leah D., 2019. "The Yin and Yang of entrepreneurship: Gender differences in the importance of communal and agentic characteristics for entrepreneurs' subjective well-being and performance," Journal of Business Venturing, Elsevier, vol. 34(4), pages 709-730.
    13. J. Samuel Baixauli-Soler & M. Encarnacion Lucas-Perez & Juan Francisco Martin-Ugedo & Antonio Minguez-Vera & Gregorio Sanchez-Marin, 2016. "Executive directors' compensation and monitoring: the influence of gender diversity on Spanish boards," Journal of Business Economics and Management, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(6), pages 1133-1154, November.
    14. I-Chieh Hsu & John J. Lawler, 2019. "An investigation of the relationship between gender composition and organizational performance in Taiwan—The role of task complexity," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 36(1), pages 275-304, March.
    15. Pham, Thuy-Dzung T. & Lo, Fang-Yi, 2023. "How does top management team diversity influence firm performance? A causal complexity analysis," Technological Forecasting and Social Change, Elsevier, vol. 186(PB).
    16. Hartarska, Valentina & Nadolnyak, Denis & Mersland, Roy, 2014. "Are Women Better Bankers to the Poor? Evidence from Rural Microfinance Institutions," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 96(5), pages 1291-1306.
    17. Duong T. Pham & Geoffrey K. Turnbull & Bennie D. Waller, 2022. "Sex and Selling: Agent Gender and Bargaining Power in the Resale Housing Market," The Journal of Real Estate Finance and Economics, Springer, vol. 64(4), pages 473-499, May.
    18. Gartzia, Leire & Baniandrés, Josune, 2019. "How Feminine is the Female Advantage? Incremental validity of gender traits over leader sex on employees' responses," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 125-139.
    19. Barron, John M. & Chulkov, Dmitriy V. & Waddell, Glen R., 2011. "Top management team turnover, CEO succession type, and strategic change," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 64(8), pages 904-910, August.
    20. Palvia, Ajay & Vähämaa, Emilia & Vähämaa, Sami, 2020. "Female leadership and bank risk-taking: Evidence from the effects of real estate shocks on bank lending performance and default risk," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 897-909.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:eee:bushor:v:56:y:2013:i:4:p:483-490. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Catherine Liu (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.elsevier.com/locate/bushor .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.