Women’s Discourses of Leadership in STEM Organizations in Singapore: Negotiating Sociocultural and Organizational Norms

Work–home negotiations

The participants reported that they negotiated patriarchal gender role expectations regarding child rearing and managing home along with managing their careers (articulated by 15 of the 17 Chinese participants, 11 Indians, two Malays, and seven of the 12 White participants). Many highlighted the patriarchal cultural norms and familial pressures they faced, leading them to prioritize balancing career and familial roles over leadership roles. Sun (Chinese), who heads an engineering department in an academic setting, framed her understanding of leadership as follows:

I’m just doing what I can manage on both sides [referring to work and home]. Maybe the results are that you’re neither. I’m just keeping people happy on both sides, the boss is happy, the kids are happy. I’m happy because I am doing my job. No leadership here, I don’t know where it comes in for me.

Sun did not highlight the leadership position she is in, downplaying her role as a team leader in the organization. Instead, focusing on her ability to balance her role as an employee and as a mother, she emphasized doing the job. She shared, “I do all the managing of the household and all the coordinating of the schedules and everything . . . The Tiger Mom.” Women, especially the Chinese participants, voiced the cultural expectation of ideal motherhood (depicted here as the idealized “Tiger Mom”) they actively participated in. Jing shared, “I do all the coordinating. Managing the house, making sure everything is done, communicating with the help, checking the schedules. I can balance that with my job, but I really don’t have room for leadership.” Women voiced the concept of balance as an overarching thread, depicting the patriarchal structure of Singaporean households (Chinese, Indian, and Malay) where women carry out entirely the labor of managing the home, and the notion of effectively running the home as a mother was intrinsically tied to their identity. Because of the way they have been devalued at work in leadership roles, the women in the study did not see leadership as on par with the important cultural work of caring for the family. They did not expect to be valued as leaders, compared with the high value they place on other cultural work (e.g., performing the work of being the Tiger Mom). Noted Chen, a Singaporean engineer, “My children and family need me . . . that is more valuable than a name card somewhere there that I am not sure I will get.”

In this backdrop, participants noted that leadership roles seemed to be in conflict with their roles as “ideal” mother, and working at the same time. A mother of two young children, ⁴ Ivy (Chinese), who is employed as a senior scientist in a biological sciences research firm, noted,

You know, you have to commit a lot, in your work and in your home also. You know when I am at home, I have to cook, I have to do this, do that . . . You’re always juggling between family and work. That guilty feeling is there. I want to rise up in my career but the main problem is I will feel guilty if I ignore my work and family. Leadership is more administrative, right?

For Ivy, leadership is an additional burden on her work–family balance. She listed the tasks she had to do at home and balance them with work; she saw leadership as administrative and therefore, burdening her with additional work. Similarly, Chen (Chinese, employed as an engineer in a multinational organization) shared that a change in the job scope to achieve “balance” was more important than leadership progression, stating, “. . . the job scope is more important rather than moving up the corporate ladder or the academic ladder.”

Time became an important resource in the conversations, where the participants reported that women generally did not prefer using up the resource of time for leadership because they must balance their work–home roles, and may not be willing to sacrifice the latter for the former. According to Hamida (Malay), an electrical engineer, leadership entailed additional responsibilities “If you’re in the decision-making position or you’re a leader, you have to devote much of your time; you have to take responsibility, and be answerable.” She agreed that having a family put a lot of constraints on her site work and she was keen to keep her job as an engineer rather than thinking about taking on leadership roles. Similarly, Shi Hui, a scientist employed in a research organization and a mother of a 2-year-old stated,

I think Science is not an easy field. It requires a lot of determination to move on because there are a lot of your profile and the way it goes . . . it’s about survival . . . When you say yes to a project, at the same time you need to learn to say no. Because if you don’t realize your limit, you will end up in a mess. So you need to know how much time you need to spend at work and how much at home so you do not take on too much and just know what your limits are.

For Shi Hui, time is a resource and its allocation is vital to balancing work and home. On probing further, she admitted that although she would agree to take on a project, she would ensure that it did not include any leadership responsibilities so that she did not have to commit more than she had to for successful completion of the project as well as for managing her domestic roles as a mother and wife.

Patriarchal cultural discourses in organizations

Whereas the patriarchal cultural discourse of “woman as wife/mother” constituted the choices made by women in not considering leadership opportunities, this cultural discourse also led to women being discounted from leadership opportunities within organizations. Participants revealed that, in addition to not feeling motivated to pursue leadership tracks due to their personal role conflicts, the organizational culture served as a barrier to leadership positions in organizations, operating on the cultural discourse of “woman as wife/mother.” Drawing upon her recent experiences with an organizational decision, Jazreel, a senior engineer (not married, and therefore, not constrained by the familial roles discussed earlier) in an academic organization, narrated,

I did not marry. But it’s the structure itself; maybe it has been for years. Asian culture maybe, which sees men fit for leadership roles. There’s this project on which I worked closely with the leader starting from the proposal state; now the leader has retired and so I should be the new leader right? A male engineer was put in charge and he was not even remotely associated with the project.

Jazreel expressed both surprise and disappointment as she chose to remain single to pursue a career in science, with the goal of advancing to a leadership role as and when opportunity would present itself, and yet was bypassed by a male engineer unrelated to the project. Jazreel’s discursive construction depicts the ways the gendering of leadership roles disenfranchises women who actively pursue leadership opportunities. Jazreel’s articulation of the patriarchal organizational culture as barrier to women’s leadership in STEM organizations was shared by most participants (35 out of 42). For Mary, a Chinese civil engineer, “I thought I will get a leadership role and waited. I wasn’t married for many years. But I wasn’t even in the radar.” For the participants, women were “invisible” in the realm of STEM leadership, and “did not see a pathway.”

Janna reported that Asian women in STEM careers are commonly perceived as not being “focused” or “serious enough” when it comes to their careers, specifically because of the cultural discourses of “woman as mother,” which serves as a barrier to women attaining leadership positions. A mother of a 5-year-old working as a scientist in a multinational research organization, she observed:

“There is this perception that women in this field are not serious about their career. Those perceptions do exist for female engineers and scientists because as Asian women, they think we would be thinking of marriage and children and not necessarily our careers.” Similarly, Ina, a Chinese scientist, shared, “My supervisor does not think I am serious about any leadership opportunity. He knows I have two children, and have to balance that.”

The expressions of women’s agency in seeking balance between work and home and thus, not considering leadership roles, is constituted amid Singaporean patriarchal cultural discourses of women’s roles as wife/mother, and in turn, reinforces organizational patriarchal discourses of women’s primary roles as mothers as distractions from their seriousness regarding careers, therefore, impeding women’s access to leadership opportunities.

Leadership as masculine

Participants noted a variety of organizational characteristics that served as barriers to women’s leadership, centered on constructions of leadership as inherently masculine. Noting that they needed to be perceived as aggressive to be accepted as a leader, they described a double bind because of the broader cultural codes regarding appropriate behavior for women. In Shreya’s (Indian ethnicity Physicist) experience: “Woman has to be more aggressive at times to show they are competent.” However, Shu Jia (Chinese, working in an engineering firm) noted, “For a woman to be aggressive, it’s not looked at culturally as a good thing. Women have to save face. That is very important. So you can’t break that norm and just be aggressive.” The organizational notion of aggressiveness as demonstration of competence is situated in opposition to the Asian cultural norm of “saving face” and the ways in which this norm acts on women’s behavior.

On a similar note, Tiffany, a White associate professor in a science department of an academic institution, observed,

. . . the other thing I’m not sure about is here there are not many woman leaders. Is it because they are being discriminated against or is it because they just chose not to be in leadership position? Many of these leadership positions require you to be of a more aggressive nature. Some women may choose not to be.

She understood aggressiveness as a leadership requirement that women may chose not to adopt.

Asian femininity

Participants (13 Chinese, nine Indian, two Malay) noted that the expectation for leaders to be aggressive contradicted women’s gender roles in Asia. Aruna (Indian Singaporean), employed in the construction industry as an engineer, voiced,

I realized that if people listen to you only when you show extra confidence and force because if you know something and you just voice it out, not necessarily people would take it or take your opinions seriously. So the way you convey your message or portray your image that you are, you know things. But as a woman, if you act too confident, people don’t like.

On one hand, Aruna shared that she needed to be more assertive if she wanted to get to a higher position in her organization; on the other hand, a woman being assertive was not culturally acceptable. Noting this double bind, Nori, a Malay participant who leads a department, reiterated “I have been told that compared to my other female colleagues, I came across as being too strong, I needed to be compassionate, but it can also backfire . . . you can be seen as not assertive enough.” Nori’s narrative depicts the double bind women experience, caught between the perceptions of being “too strong” and “not assertive enough.”

Women were also labeled as being uncooperative if they expressed their opinion. Ashley, a White participant worked in an Engineering firm, noted, “If I just state my opinion, my colleagues [referring to mostly male colleagues] will just stare at me, as if I am doing something abnormal.” Similarly, Lisha, a Chinese participant working as a senior engineer shared, “A colleague of mine in an email called me unreasonable because I disagreed with him. So if a woman disagrees, it looks like ok to call her names just because in our (Asian) culture, we have to be accommodating.” Lisha recalled the incident as being culturally influenced as she felt that in Asian cultures, men and women have different roles in organizations, and women are expected to just go with what their male colleagues decide. Alia, who is a Chinese, notes “Whenever I am in a meeting, I feel that I am not heard . . . it seems like all I need to do is nod my head for all office decisions . . . I feel that no one hears my point of view.” The double bind of patriarchal construction of leadership as masculine and performing Asian femininity impeded the leadership progression of women.

Gender and domain expertise

In STEM organizations, domain expertise is valued as a leadership quality and gendered perceptions of domain competence impedes the leadership opportunities for women (Hoyt & Simon, 2016). Alka, an Indian engineer, shared, “In mechanical engineering, men are seen as experts in the area, not women.” Moreover, Syn Yin, a Chinese engineer, shared,

Two engineers sitting, a male and a female, and both are at the same level, and somebody has to ask a question, they will go to the guy first. I don’t know, it’s just that feeling I get that men are naturally looked upon to lead.

Similarly, Natasha, a White engineer with a construction company, noted,

I felt whenever I would go to attend a meeting, there’s always men sitting around and they sort of ignore you . . . they would expect a male person to come there and represent our company . . . and I’ve spoken to my manager before and she’s like, we have to make sure we have a male person in our team.

Although she did well in assignments, Natasha did not see herself as a team leader because the organization would want to pay attention to clients’ preferences by putting a male employee in charge. The theme of gendered perceptions of domain expertise was voiced by the Chinese, White, Indian, and Malay participants.