Working in Japan: Lessons from Women Expatriates

In today’s world, business is international. As the global operations of U.S. firms acquire increasing strategic importance, so do the personnel that manage those operations, particularly expatriate managers. Since a growing number of the expatriate managers are women, U.S. firms urgently need to understand the issues surrounding the placement of women in overseas operations.

There are several reasons for the increasing number of women expatriates. First, women are reaching higher levels of management generally, and, because of the need for international experience among top managers, there is pressure to send them abroad.1 In addition, changes in the Equal Employment Opportunity laws in 1991 explicitly state that nondiscrimination in hiring has extraterritorial application.2 Finally, although certainly not least, is the increasing number of dual-career couples in the United States; many male candidates (and their spouses) now find overseas assignments less attractive.

To better understand the experiences of women expatriates, we researched the adjustment of foreign women professionals to living and working in Japan. We chose Japan as the site for our research because it is often seen as a difficult environment for foreign working women, particularly those in business or in professions such as law and engineering. Proponents of this view point out the current dearth of Japanese women managers, ten years after passage of their equal employment law.3 Also, Japan is enormously important in the world economy and to the bottom lines of many U.S. firms, making the performance of foreign personnel there critical. Finally, our initial research uncovered a significant number of foreign women professionals working in Japan. We felt that we could learn much from these women’s experiences that can be valuable to firms considering hiring foreign women for operations in Japan and other countries.

In 1992 and 1993, we surveyed the members of Foreign Executive Women, an organization based in Tokyo. In addition, we surveyed the foreign female members of the American Chamber of Commerce of Japan. The surveys yielded a 32 percent response rate, providing a total of ninety-one responses (see Figure 1 for a breakdown of the job functions of the women surveyed). In addition, we spent a week in Tokyo interviewing eighteen foreign women professionals in various fields (e.g., business, law, consulting) and organization levels (e.g., vice president, accountant, marketing director).4

We designed the surveys and interviews to answer four key questions:

1. How well do foreign women professionals adjust to working and living in Japan? What factors (e.g., type of job, language ability, or age) affect a foreign woman’s adjustment?
2. How successful are foreign women professionals in their work in Japan?
3. Do foreign women professionals have any advantages in performing their jobs as compared to foreign male professionals?

4. What can companies do to enhance the foreign women professionals’ chances of success when working abroad?

While the results of this study are most pertinent to foreign women professionals working in Japan, we believe that they have important lessons for those working in other countries, and for the corporations that manage them. The findings challenge some common assumptions about the ability of foreign women to work effectively abroad and confirm some expectations about the obstacles they face.

Before turning to our findings, we briefly describe the women in the sample and how they came to occupy their positions in Japan, which provides the first challenge to our assumptions.

Foreign Women Working in Japan: Who Are They?

One of the first surprises we encountered in our research was that only some women fall in the traditional transferee or expatriate category. Only 5 percent to 10 percent of the Foreign Executive Women members are traditional transferees, sent by their firms to postings in Japan. Our research uncovered two other groups of foreign women professionals. One consisted of independents, either those who came to Japan and found a position once there or those hired in their own country to work for a firm in Japan.5 The other group consisted of “trailers,” professional women whose husbands had been posted to Japan and who found jobs once there.

Many of the independents and trailers have highly developed skills and knowledge to offer potential employers in Japan. For example, one trailer had been in charge of the total quality management process at a major U.S. health organization before her husband was posted to Japan; she found a position with the branch of a U.S. bank in Tokyo that utilizes this knowledge. One independent had left her position as marketing vice president at a major Chicago bank and moved to Tokyo, where she found a position with a management consulting firm. Two independents had been hired in the United States after completing graduate school and were offered positions in Japan, one as the special events marketing director at a large U.S. beverage firm in Tokyo, with a budget of more than $1 million. In short, foreign women professionals working in Japan are not only traditional expatriates transferred by their firms, but also highly qualified women who have come to Japan either on their own or to accompany a spouse.

Adjustment of Foreign Women to Japan

Adjustment to the work and living environment is a prerequisite to successful job performance in any country.6 The inability to adjust, on the part of either the employee or the family, is one of the most critical factors leading to an early return home, which is costly to the firm and to the individual. Placing an expatriate overseas is expensive, and maintaining a foreigner in that position can often cost $250,000 annually.7 All this makes it imperative that the foreign woman adjust positively to her new situation.

Overall, the women in our study reported fairly positive ratings of their adjustment to working and living in Japan. On a 5-point scale, with 5 as completely adjusted, the women ranked their adjustment to their work situation as 3.8 (see Table 1) and their adjustment to general living conditions as 4. These are moderately positive scores and appear to be similar to the adjustment of American male expatriates to Japan.8 In short, adjustment does not seem to be a serious problem for foreign women professionals in Japan. However, we explored further to determine what factors particularly help or hinder adjustment.

Work Adjustment

We explored three factors related to work adjustment: the quality of the foreign women’s relationships with the Japanese, the characteristics of their jobs, and the women’s personal characteristics. With regard to the quality of the foreign women’s relationships with the Japanese, we found that women who perceive positive attitudes in their Japanese bosses, colleagues, subordinates, and clients (i.e., the Japanese trust them, believe in their professional competence, are comfortable with them, and so on) are significantly better adjusted to working in Japan (see Table 2). The interviews suggested that the more positive attitudes of the Japanese lead to a more positive adjustment for the foreign women, although it is impossible to determine the causal direction with absolute certainty.

The nature of a woman’s job also affects her work adjustment (see Table 3). We found that the more discretion a woman has in conducting her job, the better her adjustment. That is, when the foreign women are given the ability to decide what to do, when to do it, and how, they have the flexibility to adjust to their jobs in Japan. In the interviews, many women mentioned that the jobs they have in Japan give them much greater authority than the jobs they had held in the United States. A foreign woman engineer in charge of the data processing department of a branch of a major U.S. bank described the control she has over the purchasing decisions for the multimillion-dollar operation, an authority she definitely had not had in her position in the United States. In addition, several women mentioned that they greatly enjoy the greater access to higher levels of management in Japan. This aspect of the job — discretion — has an extremely strong, positive relationship with work adjustment, while a similar study of foreign men in Japan found a more moderate, although also positive, relationship.9

On the negative side, women who reported less clarity in their job duties and expectations experience lower levels of work adjustment. One woman speculated that perhaps when foreign professional women have unclear jobs, their colleagues also experience this ambiguity and feel uncomfortable about their roles. In addition, women who experience conflicts in the work demands placed on them also reported lower adjustment. The interviews revealed two special aspects of this job conflict. Several women mentioned, for example, the conflict they experience when Japanese colleagues, bosses, and subordinates ask that they perform duties below their professional stature, such as seeing to tea when entertaining a client. The higher the position a woman occupies, however, the less she encounters this sort of role conflict.

Another kind of role conflict that many interviewees at all levels reported is sexual harassment. When foreign women professionals are sexually harassed on the job in Japan, whether by clients or coworkers, they receive messages that conflict with their own expectations about professional stature and role. And even when a foreign woman is not the target of unwelcome advances, she often faces innuendos and sexual remarks from Japanese men that are considered offensive by Western women. For example, one advertising agency executive recounted that her Japanese colleagues and clients often make remarks about the physical attributes of women waitresses and entertainers during evening business entertainment, and her clients have even complained about a translator’s looks! For this executive, formerly an editor of a feminist magazine at a U.S. college, the remarks are a source of considerable job conflict.

We found language skills and age to be the most important personal attributes for successful adjustment to work. However, the relationship between language ability and adjustment is apparently more complex than we initially thought. The only significant relationship is between speaking ability and a foreign professional woman’s work adjustment. Moreover, the interviews suggested that there are two factors that influence whether speaking Japanese is important. First is whether the woman’s job is internally or externally focused, with those who are externally focused needing a higher level of spoken Japanese. Second, women who have a clear and highly sought expertise, or who are very high up in the organization, reported less need to speak Japanese. For example, one woman, a consultant, has highly sought-after training design skills. Her clients accept her inability to communicate in Japanese and use English to take advantage of her knowledge.

Finally, both the surveys and the interviews suggested that age may be an important factor in helping a foreign woman adjust to her new work situation in Japan. In Japan, age is often associated with organizational hierarchy. The Japanese assume that younger people hold lower-level positions, and, consequently, Japanese businessmen question whether younger people have the competence or authority of a senior person. Conversely, these businessmen may attribute greater competence or authority to older foreign women than they have. One woman expatriate, a vice president, told us she makes a point of mentioning her age (forty-five) to Japanese clients when getting to know them. In short, being older seems to help foreign women professionals overcome a Japanese businessman’s initial doubts about competence or authority.

Living Adjustment

For foreign women professionals in Japan, health and housing proved to be the most difficult aspects of adjustment. The women reported an average score of only 3 (on a 5-point scale) for their adjustment to the Japanese health care system. This may be due partly to philosophic differences in health care delivery and partly to the frustration of being unable to adequately describe health problems. Indeed, we found a significant, positive relationship between the ability to speak Japanese and the adjustment to health care.

Housing is a frustration mostly for the independents in our study. While expatriates receive excellent housing subsidies and most of the trailers have good housing through their husbands’ jobs, the independents, including those hired in the United States, receive little financial support in this area. Given the extremely high cost of housing in Japan, this is a source of resentment for the independents.

As for the adjustment to social life, we found that married women’s adjustment is significantly connected to how well their spouses have adjusted to living in Japan. While this is similar to research on male expatriates’ adjustment,10 which has found that the family’s adjustment is a key factor, the interviews also revealed another aspect of this issue. When the husband is well adjusted, he often provides a sounding board for his wife’s frustrations with conflicting job demands or ambiguous responsibilities. In particular, the husband often reaffirms her sense of professional self when it has been abraded by testing of her competence or by sexual harassment.

In interviews, single women frequently mentioned social life as a source of discontent and a negative influence on adjustment. Dating in Japan is difficult, informants reported, because most single expatriate men find Japanese women very attractive and are often flattered by the attention they receive from them. Single women who have dated Japanese men reported too much incompatibility in their role expectations. Quite a few of the single women, including high-level executives, stated that the primary reason they will not extend their stay in Japan is the limited dating opportunities, although most felt they have formed good friendships and greatly enjoy the many entertainment opportunities in Tokyo.

Work Performance

Both companies and potential women candidates are probably most concerned with whether foreign professional women working in Japan can perform their jobs well. According to our study, they can. The women’s average rating on a survey question concerning job performance was 3.5 on a scale of 5, where 3 indicated “fully satisfactory” and 5 indicated “clearly outstanding.” Just as important was the consistent tone of high achievement we found in the interviews. These women are excited, proud, and confident about their accomplishments. Several women gave examples of their job success in Japan, such as significantly increasing the client base for the company.

Obviously, not all the women we interviewed reported good job performance, and, in one case in particular, the woman was so frustrated that after three years she was quitting not only her position but also the company. Getting adjusted to the job is a vital component of job success, as shown by the strong statistical relationship we found between the two variables. But the bottom line is that foreign women professionals can work successfully in Japan.

Advantages of Being a Woman

Usually we think only of the additional difficulties foreign women professionals face when working abroad, but as Nancy Adler found from research in Asia, women may in fact have advantages when working abroad.11 The women in our study reported several aspects of being a woman that they think helps them adjust and work successfully in Japan. First is visibility: they felt most positive about being remembered by the Japanese that they interact with in their work. Moreover, one survey result indicated that the women thought that memorability is greater for foreign women than for foreign men. Tied to this is the Japanese curiosity about foreign women professionals, with many women stating that they are seated next to very high-level executives at business entertainment.

Second, many women indicated in the interviews that their skills for building interpersonal relationships may be better than those of foreign men. They tend to remember and ask about personal matters, such as the graduation date of a client’s son, and show appreciation for small favors and courtesies. Particularly in Asian cultures, this attention to the personal side of a business relationship can be critical, and a foreign professional woman may have skills in this area that give her an edge over foreign men.

Several women mentioned their greater ability to adapt to life as outsiders as a surprising advantage. Because the Japanese tend to discriminate very clearly between Japanese and non-Japanese, there is a constant sense of exclusion that any foreigner must endure in Japan, particularly in business, where tight networks of firms have longstanding relationships that are hard to penetrate. For women who have long experienced exclusion from traditional corporate networks, adapting to the Japanese situation may be slightly easier than for a white male. Even more surprising and sobering is that African-American women may have the biggest “advantage” in this regard. One expatriate African-American woman who had been born in the South and quickly climbed the ranks in a large U.S. high-tech firm commented:

I’ve always been an outsider, dealing with crossing cultural borders. When a taxi in downtown Tokyo doesn’t stop for a white foreign male but picks up a Japanese man down the street, the white guy is incensed, hurt, confused. He’s never been excluded before. I just wait until the next taxi comes along. I don’t expect to be included, and these kinds of incidents don’t get to me.

Surprisingly, the Japanese-American women we interviewed recounted exactly the opposite experience. While being Japanese-American often provides cultural understanding that helps them adjust more easily to the work and living situations, they stated that some Japanese men see them as more “Japanese” than “American”; thus the men have greater difficulty seeing them as professionally accomplished, carrying over the attitudes that Japanese men hold about Japanese women in the workplace to their interactions with the Japanese-American women. The Japanese-American women felt, however, that over time, with consistent exposure to their professional competence, most Japanese coworkers and clients are won over.

Even more surprisingly, quite a few women reported that an unexpected challenge is the resistance of Japanese women subordinates to working for a foreign woman. Some Japanese secretaries subvert the foreign woman by refusing to answer her telephone or not having the “time” to do her photocopying. This kind of resistance is particularly strong among older female Japanese secretaries, and most likely to be experienced by the younger foreign woman professional. Interestingly, when the Japanese office of a firm actively promotes Japanese women to positions of authority, the problem of resistance to younger foreign women professionals seems to dissipate, indicating that the root of the problem may be resentment that a foreign woman is given opportunities that a Japanese woman is not.

Finally, we should note that the women in the study who dealt with Japanese clients felt that being a woman is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage. Most rated the difficulty of working with clients as “neutral” (i.e., 3 on a scale of 5). In other words, they saw neither advantages nor disadvantages to being a foreign woman professional when finding and keeping business. In the interviews, several women reported that the initial encounters with clients can be tricky. The clients often exhibit both suspiciousness concerning the woman’s professional competence and authority and curiosity about a foreign woman working in Japan. Over time, however, most women felt they could establish positive working relationships with clients.

How Firms Can Enhance the Success of Women Expatriates

The results of our study provide some direction to firms for enhancing the odds of success for a foreign woman working abroad. We have grouped some suggestions into four areas: hiring, training, job support, and repatriation.

Hiring

Obviously, women can be successful in overseas assignments. Our first recommendation is not to reject a woman candidate out of hand because of preconceived ideas about the impossibility of success. In particular, as the results suggest, companies should not ignore African-American women candidates when forming a pool of potential candidates, because they may in fact have greater skills for dealing with the challenges of living abroad. Seriously considering women candidates makes sense not only from a human capital viewpoint, but from a legal point of view as well.

Moreover, firms need to look closely at the job for which it is considering an expatriate. If the job cannot be filled by a local hire, which is usually a more cost-effective strategy, does the candidate need to be a current member of the organization? Is the firm seeking a specific skill, such as computer programming or knowledge of the U.S. investment environment, that is not available locally but does not require extensive familiarity with the firm? Perhaps there is an independent or trailer available with the required skill. Hiring a foreign woman (or man) locally helps avoid the costs of relocation. And, particularly in the case of independents, the person is already acclimated to the country and often speaks some of the language. In foreign cities that have a number of multinational corporations, such as Tokyo, London, or Hong Kong, companies can establish a network to share information about the qualifications of trailing spouses interested in a position. This provides the dual benefits of increasing the candidate pool for all the foreign firms and of helping the expatriate spouses adjust.

Training

As we have seen, foreign women face their own challenges when working abroad. But training can help them meet these challenges. In a country such as Japan, a woman can, if old enough, enhance her credibility by mentioning her age. At the same time, foreign women can learn to use the advantage of greater visibility and the host nationals’ curiosity about them to establish important business relationships. Learning the specific challenges in a particular country and successful strategies for dealing with them can go a long way toward enabling foreign women to be successful.

Training can also include strategies for meeting challenges to professional competence or sense of self. For Western women, and particularly for U.S. women, the environment of sexual harassment in other countries can be a shock. Remarks that people in many countries consider totally inoffensive have become unacceptable in the United States. Firms can provide training that not only apprises the foreign woman of clients’ and coworkers’ potentially harassing conduct, but also helps her distance herself from it through understanding and respect for the host culture. Moreover, through experiential exercises, foreign women can learn how to respond appropriately to unwelcome advances or comments to preserve both the “face” of the host national and the woman’s sense of professional self. All the women we interviewed commented that learning how to deal effectively with this aspect of life in Japan is key to their successful adjustment.

The same recommendation applies to the testing of a foreign woman’s professional competence or authority. Teaching appropriate behaviors to respond to these situations is a very important contribution that firms can make to the women’s successful adjustment and performance. Several women stated that active, overt support from their male expatriate colleagues in establishing their professional credibility with coworkers and clients was very important. One lawyer, for example, recounted how her male law partner, in initial meetings with clients, often mentions the name of the prestigious university from which she graduated, as well as several important cases she has worked on. Given how important the university is in establishing a person’s status in Japan, his strategy is very effective. Thus we suggest that a firm include in its pre-departure training for male expatriates some suggestions for enhancing the adjustment and success of women colleagues.

Job Support

Foreign women working abroad should, when possible, continue to receive cross-cultural training during the first six months or so of their assignment. Research has shown that on-site training can be highly effective and necessary because it offers an environment in which learning can be immediately applied.12 Foreign women encounter complexities in establishing and maintaining their professional standing and may need assistance from cross-cultural consultants or trainers who can help them interpret and deal with the situations they encounter.

The foreign woman should also be given a clear title and job position. Ambiguity about a woman’s status, particularly in Asian cultures, can severely undermine her ability to establish her authority with those inside and outside the organization. Particularly in Japan, the vague title of “manager” does not have any real meaning for Japanese clients or suppliers and may undermine their confidence in the woman’s ability to make major decisions.

Finally, we found that resistance to foreign women professionals is lowest in those firms that have established a supportive atmosphere for host women employees by actively recruiting them for positions of responsibility and developing their skills and careers. In Japan, this strategy tends to be one of survival for foreign firms, since many highly qualified male Japanese job candidates are reluctant to join a foreign and, hence, unknown firm. The lack of opportunities for career-minded Japanese women in domestic firms creates a valuable pool from which foreign firms can draw. Creating a work environment that supports host women employees helps develop male colleagues’ positive attitudes toward women professionals, which can transfer to the foreign woman.

An interesting by-product of this approach is that foreign women professionals can be a tremendous help in developing the host women in their firms. For instance, one foreign woman, a senior manager at the Japanese branch of a U.S. bank, has set up monthly luncheon meetings with the Japanese women managers in the subsidiary. In her position as a senior manager, she is the role model of a woman who deals with Japanese men as both peers and subordinates. During discussions with the Japanese women managers, she draws out their frustrations and fears about climbing higher in the organization and provides insights and guidance. Although not Japanese, she suggests ways of thinking about the challenges of advancing in the company. In another example, a Japanese-American executive has been asked by her firm to help a Japanese woman who, although well qualified and on a career track, behaves in ways considered feminine and attractive in Japan but inappropriate in professional situations.

Repatriation

One of the greatest frustrations for expatriates generally, including the women we studied in Japan, is their companies’ lack of planning for their return home.13 The most common complaint from returning expatriates is that firms have no ready or appropriate positions for them, or that the positions they receive make little use of the skills and knowledge gained overseas. In one survey of American expatriates, 40 percent said that, on their return to the United States, there was no specific job for them.14 It is not surprising then that another study found that 26 percent of the American expatriates surveyed were actively looking for a different job within one year of returning to the United States.15

The women in our study are no different. Only one of the eighteen women we interviewed said that there is a specific job waiting for her at home and felt confident about the repatriation process. None of the other expatriates we interviewed or any of the independents or trailers felt their firms had any systematic approach for keeping them in the organization once they return to the United States.

Losing foreign women professionals who are transferred as expatriates is wasteful to both the firm and the woman. Successful women expatriates can be powerful models to other women considering high-level corporate careers. Returning women exhibit to others that it is feasible to do well in countries like Japan; this can help companies increase the attractiveness of assignments abroad to potential women candidates. Moreover, expatriate women who know during their assignments abroad that the company has planned for their return are likely to experience less anxiety and hence be able to concentrate on their job performance.

Companies should also plan for the independents’ future careers. While it is still unusual for firms to consider employees of operations abroad as potential candidates for domestic positions, it is a strategy worth considering. Many independents understand their firms’ global challenges from on-the-job experience and have already been “tested”; the firms already know about their job skills and performance. Why waste such invaluable resources? Firms could use a global human resource planning database to help locate and develop such independents.

Conclusion

Women who undertake an assignment abroad, and the firms that send them, should be encouraged by the results of our study. While foreign women experience some challenges different from those of male expatriates, the majority of the women we studied have been able to overcome them and have used their advantages to work successfully abroad. Based on their experiences, firms can proactively address the special needs of women expatriates and thereby increase the pool of candidates available to send abroad, as well enhance their adjustment and work performance.

Firms need to investigate and anticipate the challenges that foreign women face in a particular country because they will likely differ from those facing foreign women in Japan. Future research will have to fill this gap and provide greater understanding of how host nationals adjust to working with a foreign woman. By adding to the knowledge base our study has provided, firms will be better prepared to utilize effectively the foreign women in their overseas operations.