NEITHER BLACK NOR WHITE:
A NEW AMERICAN DILEMMA
The "Glass Ceiling" Problem for Asian Americans
Samuel Wong, Ph.D.
U.S. Department of Agriculture
Office of Civil Rights Enforcement
NEITHER BLACK NOR WHITE:
A NEW AMERICAN DILEMMA
The "Glass Ceiling" Problem for Asian Americans
Samuel Wong, Ph.D.
Samuel Wong, a former president of the Asian Pacific American Network in Agriculture (APANA), was the Acting Assistant Administrator for Administration of the Office of International Cooperation and Development (OICD) until its recent merger with the Foreign Agricultural Service in USDA. Before Civil Service, Dr. Wong was an Associate General Secretary of the Commission on Religion and Race, the United Methodist Church. He has written several papers on race relations for publications such as Engage/Social Action, the United Methodist Reporter, the New World Outlook, and the Interpreter. His most recent publication is the paper Communication and Career Advancement: the Asian Pacific Experience in USDA. He holds a Ph.D. degree from Northwestern University.
TABLE OF CONTENTS
FOREWORD v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS vii
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
ix
THE GLASS CEILING PHENOMENON 1
THE JOB SITUATION 15
BARRIERS TO CAREER ADVANCEMENT
23
Lack of communication skills 23
Too research-oriented 25
Key Barriers 26
Prejudice 27
Lack of career planning 29
Hostile environment 29
Lack of organizational savvy 32
Other barriers 34
Lack of a mentor 35
THE GENDER FACTOR
37
HOW TO OVERCOME THE BARRIERS 49
ENDNOTES 55
REFERENCES...... 59
APPENDIX...... 61
FOREWORD
David Montoya
Director
USDA Office of Civil Rights Enforcement
Advocates of equal employment opportunity have observed that barriers to career advancement are flexible lids. For the groups who are reserved in their interaction styles, their lack of assertiveness is cited as a barrier. For those who are less advanced in formal education, their relatively low level of educational attainment is a barrier. For those who are vocal, they are considered as too loud and therefore a liability to their career. For those who are focused in their professional pursuit, they are deemed to be not managerial material and they are left in their "technical ghetto." Some are blocked from advancement because they are too specialized; others are kept from upward mobility because they lack technical expertise!
Many employees feel that they work in an environment of shifting values. If the selecting officials happen to like the employees; they focus on the strengths of the employees. If the selecting officials happen not to like the employees, they focus on the purported weaknesses of the employees. The key is in the definition of the situation. He who has the power to define the situation determines the outcome of that situation. The practice of "like hires like" is common in the employment world. It is not absent in the public sector.
This dynamics of shifting values is reported in the study on Asian American experiences in the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Dr. Sam Wong, a staff member of the Foreign Agricultural Service, directed the study for the USDA Senior Executive Candidate Development Program. The USDA Office of Civil Rights Enforcement had the opportunity to review the report and decided to publish it. I congratulate Dr. Wong for making an exceptional contribution to the cause of equal employment by this "labor of love." Writing this report was not his regular work assignments.
Almost one thousand -- one of every two -- Asian American employees in the U.S. Department of Agriculture participated in the study. The response rate is high and the findings are representative. The study clarifies the problems and challenges facing Asian American employees, and their employment situations might be representative of the conditions confronted by women and other ethnic and racial minority workers.
Being neither Black nor White should not keep Asian American employees, or any employees of whatever color or gender, from career advancement. The employment systems must be reformed to make full use of all the talents of all employees. A new USDA needs the gifts of all people; we must remove the barriers that keep them from reaching their full potentials.
Washington, D.C.
June 1994
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
This study is the by-product of a management project undertaken in the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program (SESCDP) in 1993. Reiko T. Sakata of the Sakata Consulting Group, California, was the preceptor of the project. In that capacity, she worked with the author to develop the conceptual framework and the questionnaire for the survey of Asian Pacific American employees in the USDA. The project concluded with a paper titled Communication and Career Advancement: The Asian Pacific Experience in USDA.
John Miranda, former Acting Administrator, USDA Office of International Cooperation and Development (OICD), provided the resources for the author's participation in the SESCDP and the implementation of the survey project.
Larry Slagle, former Director, USDA Office of Personnel, authorized the use of the list of Asian Pacific American employees from the central personnel database. The 981 employees who responded to the survey are the real authors of this study.
Recognized Asian Pacific leaders in USDA including Vi Baluyut, Pat Basu, Fumiko Church, Angel Cielo, Nilda Godwin, Eva Kaufman, John Kusano, Karen Liu, Hao Tran, and Jinhee Wilde, pre-tested the questionnaire and offered valuable comments on improving the questionnaire and other aspects of the survey.
Wardell Townsend, Jr., USDA Assistant Secretary for Administration, endorsed the project and encouraged Asian employees to participate in the survey.
Zhixu Zheng, a visiting scholar from China, developed the computer program in FoxPro for the analysis of the survey data. She also assisted in preparing the questionnaire for mailing. Lorraine Sigler, a computer specialist in OICD, provided assistance in scanning the mailing list from the Office of Personnel.
Staff members of OICD, including Helen Stanard, Theresa Przybylek, Mary Griffin, Angela Robinson, and Lauren Beatty, provided valuable assistance at various stages of the management project.
Other colleagues in USDA, including Mike Alexander, Bob Franco, Norm Franklin, Lon Hatamiya, Karin Leperi, and Bill Payne gave critical comments on various drafts of the concept paper and the project report.
Laura Whitaker, a colleague in OICD, read the complete draft of this study and made helpful suggestions for improvement. She also gave critical comments on the project report.
Marcus Fang, a professor at the University of Wisconsin, Stevens Point, offered valuable insights on the problem of cross cultural communication. Joan Wallace, former Administrator, OICD, made available Maurice Dawkins' study of the problem of minority under-representation in the U.S. Department of State and offered cogent comments on how to overcome the barriers to career advancement.
Cathy, Philip, and John Paul Javier-Wong, the author's teenage children, gave invaluable assistance in data entry. Mercedes Javier Wong, the author's spouse and resident critic, made inestimable investments in the management project and this study.
David Montoya, Director, USDA's Office of Civil Rights Enforcement, wrote the FOREWORD for this report and provided resources to publish and distribute the report.
Vi Baluyut, in her capacity as the Acting Asian American Program Manager of the USDA Office of Civil Rights Enforcement, provided oversight to the publication and distribution of this report.
Ed Poe and Phil Villa-Lobos, staff members of USDA's Office of Communications, directed the review, editing, and publication process.
The contributions of these mentors, friends, and colleagues, and the USDA employees who responded to the survey made possible the completion of the SESCDP management project and this study.
EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
•981 Asian employees responded to the survey, yielding a response rate of 55.2 percent.
•Nine out of ten (94 percent) of the Asian employees (91 percent of the females) feel they can communicate well or very well.
•Four out of five (83 percent) of the Asian employees (65 percent of the females) are college graduates, and 43 percent have advanced degrees.
•Four out of five (82 percent) of the Asian employees (79 percent of the females) do not believe that Asians are so research-focused that they cannot supervise people.
•Seven out of ten (70 percent) of the Asian employees (75 percent of the females) are from the three established ethnic groups in the Asian community -- Japanese, Chinese/Taiwanese, and Filipino.
•Almost two-thirds (64 percent) of the Asian employees (56 percent of the females) believe they have "organizational savvy."
•Six out of ten (62 percent) of the Asian employees (58 percent of the females) have career plans.
•Almost six out of ten (59 percent) of all the respondents (50 percent of the females) feel there is a glass ceiling in USDA.
•Slightly over one-third (37 percent) of the Asian employees (27 percent of the females) believe that their agencies discriminate against Asians.
•Slightly over one-third (36 percent) of the Asian employees (43 percent of the females) have mentors.
•One-third (34 percent) of the Asian employees, both male and female, have difficulty in balancing career and family.
•Three out of ten (30 percent) of the Asian employees (25 percent of the females) are more comfortable dealing with their own ethnic groups than with other racial/ethnic groups.
•Almost three out of ten (29 percent) of the Asian employees (32 percent of the females) feel they have been undercut (sabotaged) by their co-workers or supervisors.
•Most Asian employees are not in upper grades. Only 8 percent are in Grades 14 and 15. There are no career senior executives. More females are in lower grades.
•Grade 12 seems to be the modal grade for Asian employees with Doctor's or Master's degrees.
•Grades below 11 seem to be the modal grades for Asian employees with Bachelor's degrees.
The Glass Ceiling Phenomenon
THE GLASS CEILING PHENOMENON
The Glass Ceiling Phenomenon
In recent years, Americans of Asian descent[i] have voiced concerns over the phenomenon of the "glass ceiling" in their workplace. Like women in the workforce, Asian Pacific American employees have encountered the artificial barriers that kept them from career advancement. They "can see their way to the top of the career ladder, but bump into an invisible barricade when they try to make the climb."[ii] They participated in roundtable discussions convened by the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights to register their complaint that "highly educated Asian Pacific Americans earned less relative to their white counterparts.... [They] were much less likely to be in managerial jobs than comparable non-Hispanic whites."[iii] In the Fortune 500 companies in the U.S., only 0.3 percent of senior executives are of Asian descent.[iv]
In a recent study titled Evolving Workforce Demographics: Federal Agency Action and Reaction, the U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board found that minority workers are also under-represented in the senior grades in the Federal workforce.[v] It recommended that Federal agencies "expand their efforts to develop and advance the careers of minorities in order to achieve full representation at all grade levels."[vi]
Thus, in both the private and the public sectors, the "glass ceiling" phenomenon is present for Asian Pacific American and other minority employees. They are kept from advancement to senior positions in the corporate world and in the Federal Government. However, except for the study on glass ceiling issues facing Asian Pacific Americans in Silicon Valley, [vii] little hard data is available on the nature of the barriers facing Asian Pacific American employees in the workplace.
This study of the "glass ceiling" for Asian Pacific American employees in the U.S. Department of Agriculture is the by-product of a project in the Department's Senior Executive Service Candidate Development Program. It is a follow-up of an unpublished report of the USDA Office of Advocacy and Enterprise on workforce diversity. The report found that "low percentages of minorities and women in selected occupations, in particular professional occupations; and low percentages of minorities and women in higher grades, in particular GM/GS 13-15 and in management and executive positions; [were] the two most significant problems of workforce diversity in USDA."[viii]
This study is focused on the Asian employees. It is an assessment of the barriers that keep one group of minority people from moving into the senior grades and into the management and executive positions. It makes no attempt to compare the Asian experiences with those of other minority groups or with the dominant group in the USDA. The study attempts to contribute to a better understanding of the "glass ceiling" problem by letting Asians speak out for themselves. And as they speak out, strategies for overcoming the "glass ceiling" problem are identified and recommendations for needed corrective actions are evolved.
It is the policy of the United States to insure equal employment opportunities for employees without discrimination because of race, color, religion, sex, or national origin.
5 United States Codes 7201.
Of course, the responsibility for overcoming the "glass ceiling" problem does not rest with the Asians alone. In fact, in the public sector, the Federal Government, under 5 U.S.C. 7201 and the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978, has the statutory mandate to eliminate situations in which a minority group in the civil service is under-represented. The data presented in this study are a call to the Government to hasten its efforts in expanding and assuring opportunities for equal employment for all Americans.
Table 1:Asian employees are a small segment of the USDA workforce
1984 1993
Percent of Asian
employees in
All Positions 1.1% 1.6%
Senior Positions 1.6% 2.3%