1. Asian Women in Leadership: An Introduction

This book consists of 10 Asian countries and regions (China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Sri Lanka, Taiwan, and Thailand). We present participating authors’ perspectives on women leaders’ state-of-working conditions and balancing of personal and professional lives. Additionally, we discuss convergence (commonalities) and divergence (differences) of women in leadership across Asia. The book focuses on contexts in ways that highlight the unique cultural and socioeconomic elements of Asia and the strong influence of those elements on women leaders and women in the leadership pipeline. In this chapter, we provide an overview of why we focus on an Asian perspective, what Asian countries are included and why, who our target audiences are, outlines of the ten chapters, and who we are as co-editors. Our discussion opens a possibility for seeing what has not been exposed from a dominant western perspective and identifies lessons learned about women in leadership from a uniquely Asian perspective.