Asian Women's Leadership in Six Countries/Regions

Purpose: Nursing communities have become closer across countries in recent years, mainly due to advances in transportation and communication techniques. With this change in nursing communities, it becomes necessary for future nursing leaders to be prepared to understand the impact of diverse socio-cultural and political contexts on nursing leadership across the globe. That is, cross-cultural leadership skills will be essential for successful multinational leadership in nursing in the near future. Despite the necessity of cross-cultural leadership, the nursing literature on leadership, especially women’s leadership, is mainly based on the theories, research, values and beliefs of Western countries, such as the U.S. Thus, it has been a great challenge for leaders from other cultures, such as Asia, to fully incorporate and use the principles and knowledge from the existing literature based on Western leadership. To fill the gap in the literature, leaders from six countries/regions (Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.S.,) established a group to promote collaborative efforts for further development of cross-cultural leadership, especially Asian women’s leadership (called the Asian and Asian American Study Group for Nursing Leadership; AAANL). This group, over a two-year period, participated in two workshops at Duke University School of Nursing. The purpose of this presentation is to share the findings of the second workshop on the leadership needs of emerging nursing leaders in six countries/regions (Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Thailand, and the U.S.) and to provide directions for future development of Asian Women’s Leadership in Six Countries/Regions.

Methods: At the workshop, all the participants (7 leaders from six countries/regions) made presentations on background information on each Asian culture and on how the culture and society influenced women’s leadership in their countries/regions, the current status of nursing leaders and leadership needs in the countries/regions, and existing strategies and suggestions to meet the leadership development needs in the countries/regions. Then, the presentations were discussed among the seven members, and they extracted several themes reflecting the commonalities and differences in the leadership needs across the six countries. The process included questions, answers, reflections, and memo writing. Then, the memos from the discussions were analyzed using line-by-line coding, categorization, and theme extraction.

Results: Three categories of themes were extracted: (a) five sub-themes under the category of leadership needs; (b) six sub-themes under the category of barriers; and (c) six sub-themes under the category of suggestions for future leaders. The category of leadership needs included: (a) political leadership to shape and support nurses’ voices; (b) symbolic leadership to advocate and communicate with the society (e.g., images); (c) role models; (d) networking opportunities; and (e) supports from peers and human resources. The category of barriers included: (a) glass ceiling and glass cliff; (b) cultural maturity for women leaders; (c) cultural conflicts between “good women” and “good leaders”; (d) difficulties in recruiting competent nurses with PhDs (e.g., high pay for nurses in clinical settings); and (e) lack of political skills. The category of ‘suggestions for future leaders’ included: (a) establishing human resources/networks; (b) developing skills and knowledge in political leadership; (c) developing mentorship and role models; (d) empowerment in multiple dimensions; (e) communicating and actively engaging in public affairs; and (f) establishing visionary leadership.

Conclusion: There were clear needs for future development of women’s leadership in Asian countries/regions, and further international collaborative efforts would be essential for the leadership development in nursing across the globe.