The edited Research Handbook on Women in International Management (Edward Elgar) was designed by the editors, WOW member, ProfessorKate Hutchings (pictured below)and University of Auckland colleague, ProfessorSnejina Michailova, to address the growing interest in women in management research but with the intention to deliberately respond to a need to broaden this field from largely being focused on women from Western nations working internationally in multinational corporations. The Handbook includes 17 chapters from 26 contributors with origins and work experience across Asia-Pacific, Europe, the Middle East, North America and South America.
Extant research has considered (and in some cases disputed) women’s continued under-representation as attributable to such factors as perceived prejudice in some host country locations, organisational resistance, and women’s own reluctance to work internationally. The contributions in this Handbook build on such major developments within the field of research and also address the growing interest in exploring the impact of the home country context for women’s international careers. It also extends the analysis to provide a more nuanced discussion of women’s experiences including not only those who relocate through organisational assignments but also those who self-initiate expatriation to manage and work abroad as well as those who manage and work domestically in international organisations.
The Handbook includes contributions which examine women’s international careers in areas which have erstwhile received limited attention in the literature such as those who work in local businesses, non-government organisations, and the not-for-profit sector. The editors expect that the Handbook will increase thinking around women’s representation in international work through examination of emerging themes within the literature encompassing analyses of women from a range of developing countries around the globe, self-initiated women expatriates, women in new forms of international assignments, women in non-traditional industries and sectors, women in non-traditional family roles, and researching women internationally.
Story by Kate Hutchings. Text as summarised by the co-editors in the Research Handbook on Women in International Management. The publication is available for purchase now from Edward Elgar publishers.