Abstract

Despite their higher educational achievement, women still lag behind men in senior leadership positions. The interface between work and family poses as an important challenge for women who aspire to the top. How do Asian and American women who rise to the top of their profession when they also have significant family care responsibilities combine their work and family lives? Based on extensive interviews with 62 Chinese and American women leaders, I explored how these women who are leading dually-successful lives perceive and negotiate their work-family interface. In this seminar, I focus on the lessons we learned from these women on the decisions they made about their work and family roles, on the strategies they adopted to address these competing forces, and on the cultural meaning of work-family interface for these women. References are made to recent research on work-family balance and life management strategies.

Biographical note:

Prof. Fanny M. Cheung is Professor of Psychology and Chairperson of the Psychology Department at CUHK. She is a Fellow of the APA and APS. Apart from her research interests in cross-cultural personality assessment, she pioneered gender research and championed women’s development in Chinese societies. This study was conducted when she was an awardee of the Fulbright New Century Scholars Program, and has culminated in a book Women at the Top: Powerful Leaders Tell Us How to Combine Work and Family to be published by Wiley-Blackwell in October 2008. Professor Cheung’s publications include over 150 journal articles, book chapters, edited books, book reviews and monographs on topics of personality assessment, clinical psychology, and gender issues.