“WORLDLY WOMEN” BY SAPNA WELSH AND CAROLINE KERSTEN

In the book named Worldly Women, women expatriation was discussed in terms of opportunities, advantages, barriers, challenges for women, and the impacts of Globalization. The authors made interviews with 62 female managers for the purpose of the book. The interview participants were selected according to be a “Woman in Senior-Level Expatriate Roles” (WISER). Hence, the participant women were called as WISERs in the book. The WISERS were both self-initiated and assigned expatriates and very interestingly 34 percent of the WISERS had at least one parent who was an immigrant. It means that their global mindedness comes from their parents.

The authors discussed advantages and disadvantages of expatriation in a global context. Venture is the beginning point of an expatriation, and gain comes through it. There are rewards and risks of an expatriation for female leaders. While it helps females to grow personally and professionally, it brings various difficulties. The main potential rewards are accelerated learning and development, competitive advantage, better network, leadership skills, and open-mindedness. On the other side, its potential risks are losing sense of home, adapted family planning, suffered relations, and dual career issues.

During the expatriate assignment, women leaders encounter some challenges and barriers such as glass ceiling and glass border, biases and prejudices, “double burden” syndrome, and “anytime, anywhere” performance. While double burden refers work and home responsibilities at the same time, “anytime, anywhere” performance means that obligation to be available at all times during expatriation. In spite of the mentioned challenges and barriers, women expatriates have powerful strategies such as creating a positive first impression, effective communication, and mastering global leadership competencies which are helpful to overcome the oversea difficulties.

Expatriation of global female leaders is not only an abroad work experience but also a cultural exploration since they observe how the cultures influence organizations, business practices, and work styles. During expatriation, in addition to the revealed culture, it is the time to discover concealed culture issues such as how people interact and build relations, importance of time and events, relationships in nature, and religion.

The authors build a strong correlation between expatriation opportunities and potential women leaders in organizations. Therefore, the book is directly related with leadership skills, how global and diversity issues impact leadership, and competencies of women leaders. The book makes contributions to the field and provides up-to-date knowledge to the following issues of Human Resource Management and Organizational Behavior:

• Woman leaders and leadership,

• Work behaviors in global context,

• Conflict and stress management abroad,

• Effective communication and networking in a new culture,

• The effects of diversity and globality to organizational behaviors,

• Expatriation, career management, and repatriation.

Cited Book: Welsh, Sapna and Caroline Kersten (2013), Worldly Women, I Universe.