Gender bias in international IT project development

Value of Diversity in the Workplace

The development of new websites throughout the organization I work for is a complex process, both politically and from a technical standpoint as well. The complexity of this process is accentuated by the worldwide locations that include management offices in Southeast Asia, specifically Hong Kong, in addition to Japan, Taiwan and a recently opened office in Beijing, China. The headquarters of the company is located in Southern California with the majority of sales being generated in the U.S. Approximately 30% of revenue is from Asia, with the Chinese market growing the most significantly. Last year, sales grew over 60% on these geographies, hence the focus on creating websites specific to these regions. The websites are initially created here and then sent to these specific regions for analysis and fine-tuning with content. While the Southern California office has a mix of men and women and there is a more egalitarian approach to getting work done, in these other cultures there is clearly a reluctance and discrimination against working with women. This became the source of an ongoing conflict when websites initially sent for review to these offices had been approved quickly until they learned they were written by women in the U.S. Once this was discovered during a strategy meeting held in Tokyo, the approval process ground to a halt and highly specific, very critical reviews of each website and its pages began, slowing the production. In addition, counterparts in Hong Kong and Beijing specifically asked which writer had been working on which page of a website, which had not been an issue before.

Value of Diversity in it Projects

Ironically the best writer, a woman, based in the U.S. offices was raised in the British sections of Hong Kong; her command of the language is the best of any member of the web team. The variation in how she is perceived in the U.S. versus in the Southeast Asian nations is remarkable to see in person. How culturally engrained the roles of Asian women are in those cultures became apparent during a recent trip to the Tokyo offices for a website planning and development series of meetings. During the first meeting a manager addressed her as a secretary instead of one of the key contributors to the project. The cultural variations in the role of women in traditional Japanese organizations contributed to this perception of her role, in addition to the role-stereotyping which often happens in the it industry (Adya, 2008). This became particularly awkward when she presented the new website during the second half of the meeting, which lasted for three hours. The Japanese managers had a cultural bias to see women as subservient and in roles and this became evident during the meeting. As she is Asian, the stereotype they must have had of her led to a degree of awkward interactions as the website was introduced and presented. Her writing ability is exceptional as is her ability to translate complex subjects with a great deal of simplicity. The Japanese managers were critical of the website designs and at times seemed to question the specific approach taken on wording as well. At the culmination of the three hour review of the website our U.S.-based website development team had created, the Japanese managers asked for a re-writing and also for more thorough descriptions of products, in addition to better navigation of the online catalogue as well. Despite the goal of this specific meeting to get approval on all online initiatives throughout Southeast Asia and Japan, it turned into a critique session. As a result, two months of work on the new website was now back in process, meaning other projects in the queue for our company would have to be pushed back as well. Everyone on the U.S. team wondered if they had not known she was a woman whether they would have approved the site design and content.

Summary

In conclusion, by taking a process-based approach to the work involved in the website and including the key women leaders of our teams in the discussions, cultural biases were challenged. There continues to be mistrust of women in the role of key creators and writing of their websites and it is anticipated this will take quite a while to overcome. The bottom line is that the lack of tolerance for diversity cost our company precious time that cannot be regained, no matter how fast or how hard we work. We'll have to pay the price for stereotyping on these specific projects and potentially more. Our management, thankfully, refused to just rely on the men in our teams to write the websites and design them; they acknowledge that the lead designer, schooled in Hong Kong, is the best in the company at this task. Through the approach of educating our Asian managers to our processes in the U.S., it is our intention to also show how Asian women are making major contributions to all aspects of the website development, design and writing efforts of the company.