Reconciling Conflicts

Abstract

This article examines the life stories of women leaders in the People’s Republic of China, particularly their paths to leadership, in the context of sociohistorical changes that have unfolded in China since the late 1970s. It illustrates how women developed their attitudes toward leadership roles and their unique leadership style. By unveiling the dynamic interplay between culture and institutional factors presented by social change, the authors argue that the choices these women leaders made were shaped by their continual efforts to reconcile conflicting roles arising from two axes: the “expert-official” and the “private-public” dichotomies. The article concludes with an urgent call to policymakers to protect the rights of Chinese women by developing a workplace policy that promotes gender equality at the top of the political pyramid. Such a policy would take into consideration the inherent frictions and dilemmas experienced by Chinese women leaders.

The representation of women at the top of the power hierarchy, such as in the legislature, the cabinet, and key governmental organizations, is seen as an indication of gender equality and signifies the prospect of social transformation in a given society. “Today women represent only one in seven parliamentarians, one in ten cabinet ministers, and, at the apex of power, one in twenty heads of state or government” (Norris & Inglehart, 2001, p. 126). The subject of Chinese women leaders remains an underresearched field despite the increased attention that has been paid to contemporary China in its rapid development. The limited amount of research on Chinese women that has been conducted in the early years of the 21st century has provided only a few details about this important subject. Although Chinese women had played an important role in various reform initiatives on the Chinese mainland after the change to the Communist regime in 1949, there are limits to women’s leadership because the campaign for gender equality in the People’s Republic of China (PRC) is often subservient to other national social and political purposes. Echoing Fokkema’s view, Cooke (2003) discovered that women executives in the government remain at the bottom of the power hierarchy. Male executives usually play the role of “generals,” while their female counterparts play the role of “soldiers.” Cooke concluded that gender equality, at least in government, has not been realized.

There have been few studies on women leaders in the PRC. Nonetheless, the government has adopted a series of policy measures to promote women into leadership roles since the late 1980s. The most significant step was taken by the central authorities in 1988, when the Personnel Department of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted a directive entitled “Suggestions for the Grooming and Selection of Women Officials in the Era of Reform and Liberalization.” The directive explicitly required governmental organizations and CCP-related organizations above the county level to include at least one woman in their leadership positions so as to enhance women’s representation in the decision-making process in 3–5 years. It also aimed to promote at least one woman leader in 50% of governmental and Party leadership positions at the township level in 5 years. In 1995, the government promulgated “The Programme for the Development of Chinese Women” (1995–2000) in which it spelled out its 5-year plan to enhance women’s participation in the management of national and social affairs. It sought a quickened pace to raise the percentage of women leaders in the decision-making echelon of the government and Party hierarchies, especially in sectors in which women constitute the majority of the labor force. By 2001, four women occupied key positions at the national government level, and 31 of the 36 provinces, autonomous regions, and centrally administered cities met the requirement set by the Central Organization Department, as did 94% of the governments of cities, prefectures, and counties (Gao, 2001). In 2001, the CCP Personnel Department again released a document to urge Party organizations and governments at the subnational levels to recruit women for leadership positions with commanding powers.

However, while there has been some progress in promoting female leaders in China, the level of female participation at the top of the power pyramid has remained unsatisfactory. It has been reported that women account for only 15% of all government posts across the country and that the higher the rank, the lower the scope of women’s representation. Moreover, the majority of those who have been promoted to key positions are often subordinate to male leaders, thus wielding little real influence (Du, 2001; Gao, 2001; Wang, 2002).

The Missing Piece in the Literature: Women Leaders' Voices

Social, Political, and Cultural Barriers

In recent years, the underrepresentation of women in leadership roles and the women leaders' lack of real political influence have prompted investigations into the social, political, and cultural barriers to women’s ascendency in the government. These studies have focused primarily on the cultural and structural attributes that aim to explain women’s absence at the top of the power pyramid.

From a cultural perspective, these investigations have identified the role of cultural beliefs and myths in shaping the ways in which employers, women employees, and the general public perceive women leaders. First, on the basis of some Chinese traditional beliefs, women are pigeonholed into certain roles according to their age. For instance, young women have been perceived as being unprepared for leadership roles, middle-aged women have been perceived as being tied down by family demands, resulting in their lack of commitment to carry out leadership responsibilities, and aged women have been considered as lacking the stamina to lead. These cultural myths, which have been reinforced by generations of folklore and stereotyped characters in Chinese literature, have hindered women’s ascendancy to leadership roles in the government. Second, women’s own beliefs and behavior contribute to the absence of women at the top. Social and cultural discourses, such as Confucianism, govern the wide circulation of these beliefs. Women often consider their responsibilities at home, as attentive wives and caring mothers, to be priorities. The fulfillment of this traditional view of womanhood indeed gives them not only psychological satisfaction but a sense of identity (Cooke, 2003; Wang, 2002). Hence, women are not motivated to pursue leadership. Third, the unfavorable perception of the media and the public toward women leaders, considering them to be aggressive and intimidating figures also discourages women from assuming leadership roles. Last, the male-dominated pattern of an old boys' network has limited woman’s opportunity to cultivate social networks as well (Du, 2001).

Structuralism

Another prevalent theoretical perspective on the study of women leaders is structuralism. First, the male-dominant leadership selection process and the lack of complementary legislation have been identified as major impediments to women’s rise in politics. Women are often selected for leadership roles because of their symbolic value. Once they enter the top management, they are easily perceived by their male counterparts as a threat to the existing power arrangement that the latter have been enjoying. With such a hostile organizational culture, women choose to step down from leadership positions or take subordinate positions to avoid conflicts with their male counterparts (Wang, 2002).

Second, although the government has set a quota for women leaders, little organizational support, such as family and child care benefits, is available to ensure that women can excel in their leadership positions. In addition, there are insufficient training programs and long-term recruitment plans to prepare young women for eventual leadership roles. Hence, women have to rely on their own resources to craft leadership skills and gain competence on the job after they have been promoted. Their performance thus often suffers, as does their self-esteem. Also, the set retirement age for women at 55, 5 years earlier than that of men, also works to contradict the goal of increasing women’s representation in leadership (Du, 2001).

Although the literature on leadership in the Chinese cultural context has provided useful insights into the causes of the underrepresentation of women at the top of the power pyramid in China, it nonetheless has a number of drawbacks. First, these studies have been based primarily on a traditional male-dominant approach, assuming that vying for power, shouldering heavy responsibilities, and having equal decision-making representation are intrinsically good. They have failed to examine critically such issues as how women themselves perceive leadership roles and whether there are inner logics behind women’s view of themselves, their views of leadership roles, and their perceptions and behaviors. If vying for power and heavy responsibilities at work would take a heavy toll on women’s self-identity, hindering their inner sociopsychological cohesion or compelling them to trade-off the values they regard as important, the pursuit of equal representation at the top levels of administration as a goal for the government’s workplace policy must be challenged.

Second, the literature has usually explained the lack of women leaders at the top according to structuralism theory. Insufficient governmental policies and legislation are supposed to be the causes of women’s underrepresentation; yet, women are regarded as passive receivers who formulate their choices according to the rules laid down by the government. In actual practice, women do not take this limit for granted; instead, they adapt to the limits set by the rules. They make good use of all the opportunities presented by the environment, with the goal of meeting their personal objectives. Thus, without taking women’s views into account, policymakers not only fail to design appropriate policies and legislation that can promote the well-being of women leaders but actually do harm to women’s growth by creating more conflicts for women who step into leadership roles.

Third, the literature has overstressed the negative implications of culture but has neglected the gap between policies and culture. The task for scholars does not lie in calling on both the women and the government to change their respective cultural biases and values but to identify the incompatibilities between policies and social norms and values and to propose appropriate policy measures to ensure gender equality. Again, without examining the existing pro-women policies through women’s lenses, such incompatibilities can easily be ignored, so governmental policies may be based on false assumptions.

Method

The Main Question

The central question for the study presented here was how women perceive the impact of rapid social changes in mainland China on their leadership development at the top administrative level. A related question is how these women have developed strategic adaptations to excel amid this rapid social transformation. By uncovering the women’s life stories, the study unveiled motivations, critical events, opportunities, and conflicts presented to the women along their career paths and the underlining values, identity, and reasoning guiding their choices. The study focused on women’s perspectives and voices, adding a completely new dimension to the literature on women leaders in contemporary China.

Guiding Frameworks for the Research Design and Analysis

We adopted a life-course perspective in the research design on the assumption that women are not passive recipients of external changes but actively pursue their goals amid sociopolitical changes (Giele & Elder, 1998). The research was designed to surface the interactions among personal choices, the transforming sociopolitical environment, and women’s strategies in coping with competing demands from family and workplace at the critical junctures of their lives. Life-course theory emphasizes understanding women’s lives by placing their narratives within structural, social, and cultural contexts.

We chose feminist theory as an overarching framework for our study and analysis (Gergen, 2001; Gilligan, 1982; Jordan, Kaplan, Miller, Stiver, & Surrey, 1992). Gilligan called attention to the importance of giving a voice to unheard women, especially young girls. Mapping women’s voices has a number of implications. It can help researchers understand how women understand and perceive their world or reality and can help researchers make use of the information that is generated to formulate a women-centered policy to balance the unequal employment policy based on gender. To listen to the voices of women leaders, we also adopted the life-story interview method, providing a space for the Chinese women leaders to voice their concerns, surfacing their values, assumptions, reasoning, and worldviews (Gluck & Patai, 1991). The interviewees were helped to narrate their lived experiences according to their own stream of thoughts. At times, they would clarify ideas, follow-up on some points, or encourage the continuation of the dialogue. Quantitative research could easily overlook this emphasis.

Selection of Interviewees

The overall goal of the research was to generate a more in-depth understanding of the lived experiences of women leaders who have risen to top administrative positions in the PRC. Therefore, we decided to invite informants from the higher education sector for a number of reasons. First, it was difficult, if not impossible, to recruit women informants from other governmental sectors because the nature of their work might be politically sensitive and they might not want to share their views freely in their capacity as employees of the government and the CCP. Second, one of us is a top administrator at a prestigious university, which helped facilitate the recruitment of informants from her networks. Third, most of the universities in China are still financed by the government, and the appointment of all executive positions is not only an academic appointment but a political appointment by the CCP. This combination of an academic requirement with a political one is unique to the CCP political system in the PRC. In this sense, women leaders in a university setting can be regarded as a subset of women leaders in a governmental setting. Thus, the information obtained from this particular group could give us a glimpse of the experiences of other women leaders in a similar setting.

Although the study specifically focused on a few cases in the higher education sector, the intensive life-story interviews, nonetheless, helped answer the given research question because of the interviewees' invaluable access to the information that we sought. Hence, the benefits of the data collected from a few cases far outweigh the disadvantages of the sheer number of cases. The data generated by extensive interviews provided the parameters with which the research findings and the generalizations made by previous studies could be validated.

This article is based on in-depth interviews with five Chinese women leaders in universities, which can be regarded as a pilot project for a follow-up large-scale survey of Chinese women leaders. Those who were interviewed included two university presidents, two deputy presidents, and one deputy Party secretary (which is equivalent to a vice president role). For confidentiality, the interviewees are identified as Madam A, Madam B, Madam C, Madam D, and Madam E.

Findings

Age Cohort and Family Characteristics

The interviewees were born between 1947 and 1962 and hence belong to the first generation after the establishment of the PRC and can generally be considered the “baby-boom” age cohort in China. The five women leaders shared strong similarities in family background. All were brought up in families that had been well educated and middle class before 1949. Their parents were either state officials or professionals. Furthermore, all the women were the eldest children in their families and thus were given the responsibility of taking care of younger siblings and performing household tasks. Since their parents were busy at work, they were influenced by the work ethic of their parents and were given some room to make independent decisions at an early age.

In a way, these women leaders bear distinguishable characteristics of growing up in the 1950s and early 1960s. Since their young parents were usually employed, following the “nation-building initiatives,” the women were often left underattended as children. The parents' lack of time and energy for their children made it difficult for their young children, but at the same time exposed them to various challenges, ranging from performing daily routines of cooking, washing, escorting younger siblings to school, making important decisions like registering family members in a new district, and changing schools for themselves, when moving into a new district. These experiences, as reported by the interviewees, had left a deep imprint on the paths they pursued later on.

The Path to the Top

The women experienced a series of social changes from 1960 onward. Four of the women were caught up in the “go up to the mountains and down to the countryside” movement that was launched by Mao Ze-dong in the 1960s. However, they quickly seized the opportunities presented by the resumption of university education in 1977 to rekindle their desire to pursue a higher education. Yet, redirecting a career path was not easy because it implied separation from their spouses to move back to the city and suffering the loss of family life for a number of years.

In a nutshell, the movement, called the Cultural Revolution, enforced downward social mobility for the offspring of families who had been well educated and middle class before 1949. During that time, millions of urban educated youths were mobilized and sent to rural villages and frontier settlements in remote regions, with the goal of transforming them into “new-style, cultured peasants” under the stern but correct ideological guidance of poor peasants, while transferring technology to impoverished areas in China. It was estimated that nearly 1.2 million urban youths were sent to the countryside between 1956 and 1966, and no fewer than 12 million were relocated between 1968 and 1975. The movement wound down in the early 1970s, after which many urban youths returned to cities, but many others remained in the countryside (Bernstein, 1978).

In retrospect, these women believed that their pursuit of a university education was a critical event that had prepared them for their ascendency to power and stressed the shifting social–political environment that has been conductive to their rise. One such change was the “Four Modernization” program, whose aim was to advance the nation’s agriculture, science, and technology industries and national defense. In 1982, the CCP’s Personal Department launched a massive campaign to replace the old revolutionary guards with younger and better educated officials (Walder, 2006). It was estimated that 1.4 million senior officials who were recruited before 1949 were persuaded or forced to retire from their posts, while nearly 500,000 college-educated younger officials were placed in leadership positions above the county level (Zang, 2004, p. 61). The interviewees thought that both the state policy of recruiting young educators in the early 1980s and the continuous expansion of university education in the subsequent three decades offered them the rare opportunity to achieve upward mobility.

Madam A was recruited by the CCP’s Personnel Department as an executive officer after graduation. In 1989, she was transferred to a newly established university and rose steadily to the position of president within a period of 16 years. Madam B graduated as a physician with an extremely good academic performance and was handpicked by her professor as the future leader of the medical school because of her academic and professional excellence. Upon graduation from the university, Madam C and Madam D continued their academic careers in university administration and rose steadily from the positions of teachers and researchers to vice president and president of their respective universities. After completing her university education in finance, Madam E spent 16 years in the booming banking sector that had increasingly became important in China’s gradual transformation to a market economy. She first served in a local branch of the People’s Bank of China and then moved to the bank’s headquarters following her husband’s job transfer. After the university was restructured, she was eventually transferred and promoted to be the deputy secretary in a university.

In short, our interviewees shared commonalities in their pathway to leadership. They exhibited a strong motivation for educational attainment in their earlier years, and they seized the opportunity presented by the resumption of university education to return to their intended life course. Meanwhile, the transformation of China’s sociopolitical environment from the early 1980s onward created favorable conditions for the women’s continued rise. In other words, the external changes provided the much-needed milieu within which our interviewees strived to excel.

The “Accidental” Leaders: Perceptions and Strategies

Perceptions of the leadership role

The interviewees began their careers in the early 1980s, and their upward mobility paralleled a series of measures adopted by the government to promote women into top administration positions from 1988 onward. Yet, the interviewees considered their personal attributes, not a pro-women policy, the most critical factor for their promotion. Madams A, D, and E stressed the importance of caring, forgiveness, and determination as keys to the door to the top of the political pyramid for women. Madam B said her rise was a result of her good reputation and virtue. Madam C attributed her rise to her excellence in teaching and her leadership to students and colleagues.

Another commonality is that the interviewees thought that their path to leadership was “unexpected” or “accidental.” They expressed little ambition for further promotion, and more than one of the five were ready to relinquish the leadership role if circumstances so compelled. Madam B said that she was persuaded to assume her current position by a sense of duty and collectivism and did not aspire to the position of president or any other leadership post. Madam E thought that her current position was determined by her superiors; she would have preferred a position as a professional financial consultant in the banking system.

The lukewarm sentiment the women expressed toward leadership roles was accompanied by regrets for the trade-offs they had to make between leadership and professional roles, or the “government official-expert” dichotomy. Allegiance to the leadership role is to the CCP, whereas allegiance to professional roles is to the profession. In fulfilling the political and administrative requirements of the former leadership role, Madam B did not have much time left to carry on her passion to write academic publications.

The importance of not losing time to maintain their professional practice is illustrated by Madam E’s attempt to return to the professional area after working as an administrative leader at the bank headquarters. Unsatisfied with her role, in her 40s, she volunteered for a 2-year trainee position as the deputy head of a local bank branch. She expected that this position would eventually lead her back to a nonadministrative position. However, the 2 years of separation from her family did not bring the expected results; instead, she was promoted to Party secretary for student affairs in a university.

Moreover, the women experienced gender disadvantages in the workplace. They mentioned male-dominant bonding and socializing as particularly unfavorable for women’s advancement. Madam B suggested that drinking together and making friends at night were the privilege of male colleagues. Male colleagues could also visit their superiors at their homes during which they could disclose their actual performance at work and cultivate relationships. Yet, women’s participation in such activities contravenes social norms and may put the women at risk of unfavorable allegations by others that they use their gender roles to seek further advancement at work. Thus, women have to rely exclusively on their good reputations and work performance.

Leadership styles and strategies

The attributes of nonconfrontation and conciliation to attain advancement that the interviewees highlighted are congruent with the leadership style the women chose. Surrounded by a half dozen male leaders, Madam D described her leadership strategy as being gentle and tactful. She tended to persuade her male counterparts to accept her decisions by not forcing their compliance in a top-down fashion. Many decisions could not be implemented either forcefully or at one blow. Rather, they needed to be pursued incrementally with flexibility and resilience. Likewise, in Madam B’s view, the competitive edge of women in leadership lies in their feminine softness. Women leaders, she advised, should even appear to be vulnerable or emphasize their female qualities by wearing feminine outfits, if necessary. The interviewees also unanimously rejected the label of “superwomen” in their leadership style. Madam E described herself as gentle, fragile, and good-natured and saw herself as being a tender, considerate, and forgiving leader but occasionally lacking in decisiveness.

Preserving “Ideal Womanhood”

Irrespective of their commitment to work, the interviewees greatly valued their family lives. Almost all are proud of being devoted wives and caring mothers. Madam B spent most of her time outside work attending her only daughter, such as escorting her to school, monitoring her studies, and discussing salient issues. On her daughter’s 18th birthday, she compiled a biographical file for her daughter containing the girl’s photographs, infant hair, and drawings and diaries written by her and her husband. Madam B attributed her love for her daughter and the family to family tradition. She admired the multiple roles played by female family members as simultaneously educators, caretakers, and household managers.

But the biggest challenge faced by the interviewees lay in the need to coordinate their own careers with those of their husbands and the sensitivity of handling husband–wife relationships. Madam D had to sacrifice an educational opportunity in the United States for her husband and stayed behind in China. She attributed her decision to the values of her generation that always put the needs of others ahead of individual ambitions and believed that a woman should not pursue her career at the expense of her family. Madam E also stressed that family is the backbone of a woman; family support provides women with stability so they can work wholeheartedly, a recurring view revealed by the interviewees.

Furthermore, maintaining rapport and avoiding conflict with a spouse were not always easy and required special care, especially for female leaders whose husbands were less successful in their own work. For instance, Madam A established a rule for herself that she made decisions at work only and left household decisions to her husband for his sense of dignity and respect in the family.

Discussion

Four major characteristics of Chinese women leaders emerged from the study. First, the women tended to see themselves as “accidental” leaders, even though they displayed a strong motivation for self-fulfillment at early stages of their lives. Second, they adopted a lukewarm, even passive, attitude toward their leadership roles, as signified by their readiness to give up their leadership positions if circumstances warranted. Third, they formulated a nonconfrontational and conciliatory style of leadership. Fourth, they cared very much for the husband–wife relationship and had no intention of allowing other things to ruin it. At first glance, these characteristics seemed puzzling, but if viewed within cultural and institutional contexts, one can appreciate the reasoning that governed the evolution of certain attitudes and behaviors of the interviewees and the resolution of conflict arising from the interplay among the value conflicts, identity confusion, and contextual constraints pertaining to their leadership roles.

Attitude and Behavior Toward Leadership as Strategic Adaptation

Viewed from the life-course paradigm, individuals and groups are not passive recipients of personal fate or social changes but actively make decisions and organize their lives around specific goals and needs (Giele & Elder, 1998). The women in our study grew up as motivated, independent, and goal-oriented women in their formative years. As the eldest children in their families, they learned to be independent, decisive, and responsible persons. Influenced by their parents, they sought satisfaction in educational attainment. The need for self-improvement was the driving force for attaining a higher education once the opportunity was reintroduced in 1977. Their strong motivation to elevate themselves set the women apart from rest of the “intellectual youths,” even though returning to the university implied sacrificing family life. Self-esteem was also illustrated by the women’s continued ambition in middle age, as Madam E’s enrollment as a trainee at Age 40 illustrates.

The ambivalence and passiveness that the interviewees expressed for their leadership roles contrast sharply with the ambition they exhibited in their youth. This shift in attitudes can hardly be explained by a change in life goals. Rather, it underscores the constraints within which they managed their leadership roles. In fact, these positions introduced certain kinds of conflicts, which compelled the women to adopt a different approach as circumstances required, so as to preserve the values and ideas that they felt were important.

As the life-course paradigm suggests, the timing of life events has to be understood as both passive and active adaptation for reaching individual or collective goals. How and when a person accumulates or deploys wealth or education, takes a job, or starts a family are examples of various possible strategies (Giele & Elder, 1998). Viewed in this light, the “exit” option may be passive but at the same time it could be understood as a deliberate choice that helps women leaders achieve their goals, given a specific set of constraints.

Although the promotion of women leaders initiated by the Chinese government was an end in itself, it also served to secure the national objective of socioeconomic development in the reform era. Accordingly, the mechanism to promote women leaders was structured in a top-down fashion. Once the quota for women leaders was set by the CCP Personnel Department, all levels of government and public institutions had to comply in a given period. The selection of university leaders involves a complex process in which the CCP committee at a university and its supervisory units play key roles, while opinions from selected university staff are also solicited in decision making. Candidates are examined for a set of qualities, including their political allegiance, academic qualifications, management skills, relevant experience, and popularity among the staff (Xi, 2005). Going through this selection process, women leaders have to shoulder an additional function: to represent women. It is in the context of these life events and selection mechanism that the interviewees' views of themselves as accidental leaders may be understood.

The “Official-Expert” Paradox

The first ramification of the leadership role is the paradox between self-identification as an “expert” in a profession and the role of an “official” of the CCP. The interviewees aspired to be professionals, and this aspiration strongly shaped their expectations of themselves and their evaluations of their achievements, as well as their satisfaction in a leadership role. However, once they became leaders, they found themselves confronted with competing demands from their expert and official roles; this is a paradox that at least partially underlay the ambivalence the women expressed toward their leadership roles.

The particular tension between expert and official in the specific Chinese context is the result of the dualism of leadership at all levels of government, public institutions, and state-owned enterprises in China (Zang, 2004). A professional team always conducts its business under the supervision of a CCP committee comprised of Party officials. In the case of universities, the president and vice president administer the day-to-day business of the university, while the Party committee is responsible for providing political guidance and the like. In practice, there is often an overlap between the two teams; for example, a president may also play the role of the deputy secretary because he or she is usually a Party member. Studies have suggested that those officials with substantial experience in propaganda units and Party organizations tend to rise within the CCP hierarchy (Zang, 2004). Thus, once the interviewees were promoted to Party secretaries or deputy secretaries, they were expected to follow the Party’s directives and behave in certain ways. The loss of freedom and creative space, as described by Madam A, was inevitable. The loss of time, energy, and opportunity for continued professional advancement was particularly frustrating for those with aspirations to excel professionally. These losses constituted a primary source of stress.

In this regard, the liberalization era and the equality policies have brought opportunities for upward mobility to women university graduates but opportunities have also bred friction along the expert–official axis. Although the expert–official tension does not characterize all leaders who were promoted to leadership roles by the official reform of the system in the 1980s, it does present a specific dichotomy to women leaders in China, while women in other societies experience stress from other competitors and social expectations (Higgins, Dexbury, & Lee, 1994).

Cultural Norms and the Nature of the Leadership Paradox

The second ramification is the paradox between cultural norms and the nature of leadership for women leaders in the workplace. The top-down selection process implies that those who are chosen will fit broad institutional expectations. Feminine “softness” constitutes the institutional expectations and norms for women leaders. Thus, those who are confrontational, aggressive, and individualistic are not preferred. In other words, women leaders have to exhibit precisely the opposite of male attributes, such as assertiveness and egotism, that exist in the Chinese institutional context. Only within this institutional expectation and norms can the unique leadership style of Chinese women leaders be understood.

Nevertheless, this unique leadership style also underscores women leaders' carefully executed strategies to pursue their own goals within the given constraints. Madam D’s strategy to pursue her objective with flexibility, persuasiveness, and instrumentalism illustrates how women leaders advance their goals within the limits that have been imposed on them. In Madam D’s case, demanding compliance from her male colleagues in a top-down fashion would not only be against the norm but counterproductive. The strategy Madam D adopted thus allowed her to advance her objective without appearing to threaten prevailing norms. In fact, Madam D was proud of her leadership skills, believing she outsmarted her male counterparts in many respects. The institutional norms and expectations within which women leaders operate also explain why the interviewees vehemently rejected the notion of being superwomen, which carries a hint of toughness and masculinity and compromises their survival in the institutional setting. In this regard, women’s leadership style is conditioned by the cultural norms of the workplace.

The Public–Private Paradox

Leadership roles also brought tension to the family, while highlighting the need of women leaders to reconcile competing demands from both the workplace and the family. Although the women grew up as independent, decisive, and goal oriented, they nonetheless exhibited values that are consistent with Chinese traditions. Being virtuous, assiduous, devoted, and caring mothers and wives were the qualities they admired in the role of women in traditional Chinese culture, and these qualities, in turn, have also been seen as what define ideal womanhood. These values of the family and perceptions of the ideal woman constitute a set of preconditions within which the interviewees performed their leadership roles.

The remarkable congruence between being conciliatory, forgiving, and nonconfrontational in the workplace and being able to retain cohesiveness and intimacy in the family has guided the women to resolve tensions within their families. Yet, the battle is still difficult, not only because women leaders have to meet the expectations of their husbands and children according to internalized cultural norms but because they have to negotiate the work–family conflict by increased effort and even sacrifice. In the end, the women have had to overcome both internal and external frictions, stretching themselves to the limit to reach their ideal selves.

Conclusion and Policy Implications

The literature on Chinese women has focused mainly on institutional arrangements. The underrepresentation of women in leadership positions is regarded as the consequence of the gender-insensitive institutional setting and ineffective governmental policies. Although these analyses offer some valuable insights, they fail to see women as self-motivated and determined agents who actively shape their life plans with careful management of the challenges presented by the institutional and cultural environments. Consequently, the real opportunities for, and impediments to, women’s rise in the workplace have escaped close examination. On the policy side, pro-women measures and policies that fail to account for the need for more compatibility between professional and political requirements and the effort to tackle competing values arising from the public and private domains have not yielded the intended results. On the contrary, such regulations and policies may indeed create more internal frictions that are detrimental to women’s psychological and physical well-being.

Through our life-story study, the women leaders' voices unfolded, which helped sharpened our understanding of how the women actually made a difference at the top of the administrative hierarchy by crafting a special kind of leadership style that enabled them to excel in their current administrative roles. We particularly discussed the role of cultural and institutional factors in influencing the attitudes and behaviors of women leaders in China and how the women have crafted different strategies to tackle these factors. For example, the ambivalence toward leadership expressed by the interviewees highlights their attempts to preserve the concept of the ideal woman in the family arena and of their identity as experts in the workplace. The women developed a kind of conciliatory leadership style to address the constraints inherent to the unique institutional environment in China. Hence, they had prepared an exit strategy for their current dilemmas by claiming their readiness to step aside from these leadership roles. This can be understood as a strategic move to reconcile the conflicts along two axes, the expert–official and the private–public. Again, this is an adaptation strategy that is essential to corporate leadership (Torbert, 1991)

On the basis of the voices of these women leaders, we also pinpointed the role of workplace policy in preventing women from reaching the top of the political pyramid by highlighting the limitations of the CCP’s existing pro-women policies. These limits include the Party’s top-down selection mechanism and the workplace policies that do not address properly the prevailing cultural norms and myths regarding women’s roles in the family and workplace. In this regard, unless the selection mechanism can be complemented by the bottom-up approach, more relevant policies or stronger measures to promote women into decision making and political roles are unlikely to be successful. What is more detrimental is that women leaders will suffer and bear the cost of dealing with some unintended consequences of the current gender-insensitive policy in China. This is a hidden cost that women have to pay but men do not. It definitely makes leadership roles not only insurmountable but expensive to bright Chinese young women.

The findings of the study are highly valuable for reforming social work practice and social policy in China because they provide insights into how women have been marginalized and how their potential has not been fully realized. From a feminist perspective, there is an urgent need to develop a gender-sensitive personnel and workplace policy to promote women to the top level of administration in the Chinese Government. Without the development of appropriate measures to rectify the policy gaps, as illustrated in this article, we anticipate that more women with appropriate qualifications will be kept from the door leading to the top, the result being further workplace wastage and a brain drain. Women’s psychological traits offer a different leadership style that stresses relationships and connections (Gilligan, 1982). These feminine traits have been recognized as essential to building productive organizations that strive not only for profit but for social responsibility and investment in human capital. To recognize gender inequality in China’s current social policy will set a new direction for a gender-sensitive workplace policy to promote the welfare of Chinese women in the long run. Such a policy will definitely attract more bright and competent women leaders to rekindle their commitment to the CCP and to help governmental organizations better serve people with diverse needs and problems. It will also reduce women’s redundancy and decrease the number of women who return home. The younger generation may opt to enter businesses or nongovernmental organizations because doing so will free them from dealing with the dilemmas that are inherent in the interplay between professional and political requirements.

What can social policymakers do to promote gender equality in the PRC? Apart from advocating for a gender-sensitive policy, two other recommendations can be implemented to enhance women’s capacity for leadership and to enlighten the public to respect women’s right to equal employment opportunities at the top administrative level. To strive for these normative ends, policymakers can choose the social work profession as a mechanism for implementing a gender-sensitive policy and its related measures.

First, social workers can design appropriate training programs for women leaders (including potential ones) to maximize their social capital, such as developing networks among women leaders in a governmental setting to enhance their resilience, providing mentorship, cultivating mutual support among women leaders, and creating a platform for advocacy of a gender-equality policy. In addition, social workers can develop women’s human capital, such as by providing training and mentorship for young women academics to enhance their competitiveness and to provide support for their career advancement. This strategy is particularly critical, given the availability of opportunities for promotion under the new appointment system. Second, besides providing developmental support to women leaders, social workers should develop some long-term strategies to raise the public’s awareness of gender sensitivity to reduce, if not eliminate, all forms of discrimination and traditional patriarchal values through educational programs and affirmative actions, including family education ranging from schooling to upbringing (Fogarty & Rapoport, 1971) for both women and men.