a study on women's career advancement in malaysia

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Journal of Human and Social Science ResearchVol. 2, No. 1 (2013), 21-34

webpage: http://www.oricpub.com/hssr-journal

H uman and S ocial

S cience R esearch HSSR

Vol. 2(1), 21-34

ORIC Publications www.oricpub.com

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Keywords:Women’s career advancementWork-life balance

Received: 04 Jul 2013

Accepted: 15 Aug 2013

Lim Yet-Mee

Associate professor, Faculty of Accountancy &ManagementUniversiti Tunku Abdul Rahman,Malaysia

Tan Luen PengLecturer, Universiti Tunku AbdulRahman, Malaysia,

Benjamin Chan Yin-FahFaculty of Business and Management,

Asia Pacific University of Technologyand Innovation, Malaysia

A Study on Women's Career Advancement in Malaysia

Corresponding Author: Lim Yet-Mee

Associate professor, UniversitiTunku Abdul Rahman, Malaysia, [email protected]

Abstract

The research aims to examine on the barriers that hinder from the career advancement of

female employees in manufacturing companies. In this research, we will review the barriers

which include work-life balance, networking, mentoring support, and training anddevelopment. In the research a total of 200 questionnaires were distributed to female

executive who was working in the manufacturing industry in Klang Valley area but only

162 questionnaires have been completed by the respondents. Pearson’s analysis and

multiple regression analysis were used for this research. The final result shows that the four

variables, only work-life balance as a predictor barrier to women’s career advancement. As

such for future research, other factors could be considered that this includes broader field

or industry, different level of female employees, ratio of race in Malaysia and also

corporate practices and corporate culture.

1. INTRODUCTION

One of the most significant social changes of the last century is women’s

involvement in the paid workforce (Powell, 1999). Although gradual

increases in the levels of women’s involvement in the workforce continue to

be observed (Morrison and Glinow, 1990) but the numbers of women

holding managerial positions were found to be much lower (Greig et al.,

2007). A study by the world economic forum (WEF) endeavoured to

measure the ‘‘gender gap index’’ to find out the level of inequality between

women and men. The findings found out that woman are reported to have

made considerable strides in organizational representation with moving into

upper-level management positions, but more than half remain working in

the lower stratus of the nonprofit sector. Surveys indicate that gender is still

a common obstacle to women’s career advancement in many contexts and

women have had difficulty in taking an equal place in decision making

positions within industry and business (Vinnicombe and Colwill, 1995).

Tharenou et al. (1994) found that women advanced more slowly in

organizations than men. Women usually find themselves in a difficult

situation when they have to choose between their family responsibilities and

career development (Valentova, 2005; Claes, 1999). Women tended todedicate more hours for family activities rather than men (Eby et al., 2005)

but that hour devoted to work activities were equal for men and women.



22 | A Study on Women's Career Advancement in Malaysia

Journal of Human And Social Science Research / Vol. 2, No. 1 (2013), 21-34

Therefore, the total time and energy devoted to family and work were too heavy in order for the women to

perform both roles well or happily (Duxbury et al., 1991). Powell and Butterfield (1994) suggested that

women’s lack of advancement to higher levels of management often results from their having less

fully-developed informal networks than men. Women tended to use their informal networks where men

were more instrumentally active to promote their careers. Therefore, women missed out the opportunity to

“schmooze with decision makers” (Castro and Furchgott-Roth, 1997). A study by Linehan (2001) also

indicates that women are often less keen and have less time to take part in informal networking while men

spent more time networking than women after working hours.

Although mentoring may be important to the advancement of both male and female employees, it may be

even more critical for women. Many researchers have concluded that women are not well integrated into

monitoring systems (Betz & Fitzgerald, 1987; Nieva & Gutek, 198l). Nieva & Gutek (198l) suggested that

male mentors may find it difficult to accept female as protégés because the male mentors assume that many

female lack of commitment and drive required for a long-term professional career. Research by Cooper and

Hingley (1983) suggested that women may miss opportunities for career advancement because they lack

female role models. The lack female role models probably give rise to responses which mirror the behaviourof successful male executives and may further isolate women as their lifestyle does not easily adapt to the

male managerial model (Cooper and Hingley, 1983). According to Tharenou et al. (1994), even though

training and development increased managerial advancement, it is most favourable to men as compared to

women. However, Schein and Mueller (1992) argue that “think manager, think male” as men may need less

training to develop their credibility as managers and skills for management because they have greater

opportunities than women. Hence, women face more barriers in searching for jobs that are directly related to

managerial skills than men.

2. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES AND SIGNIFICANT OF THE STUDY

It is a fact that omen to gain equal treatment in career advancement because of work-life balance issue,

networking, mentoring support and training. There was an argument that women have not made significant

progress because they do not have the required educational backgrounds, skills, and work experiences. The

research study is to identify the barriers that hinder the career advancement of female employees. By

examining the barriers that hinder the career advancement of female employees, it helps us to increase the

number of women’s involvement in upper -level management. Finally, it will reduce the gap of imbalance

between both genders in upper-level management.

3. LITERATURE REVIEW

3.1 Works-Life Balance

Studies showed that work-life benefits are commonly viewed as a solution to help female employees balance

their work and non-work commitments. Work-life benefits refer to programs and policies designed to help

employees manage the competing demands of life, work, and family. Examples are inclusive of flextime,

compressed work weeks, job sharing, part-time work, seasonal schedules, telecommuting, paid time-off

plans, personal leave of absence or respite, child care benefits, lactation areas, on-site childcare centres,

school-age programs, dependent care spending accounts, managerial work-family training, elder care benefits, and work-family resources (Johnson, 1995). Work-life balance practices and policies focus on

removing gender-based structural barriers towards women’s advancement. Consequently, it can be assumed

that work-life balance practices and policies designed to acknowledge and support the multiple demands of



L. Yet-Mee, T. L. Peng, B. C. Yin-Fah | 23

© ORIC Publications /2013

family and work should foster women’s career advancement. A recent study confirms that women are taking

the advantage of flexible work arrangements in order to meet their career goals and manage the complexity

of other duties (Shapiro et al., 2007).

Although the use of organizational work-life programs has been shown to reduce work-family conflict,

nevertheless female employees continue to receive less facility and support from their organizations that

necessary to differentiate between work and non-work related roles and avoid conflict of both roles. A

number of recent data sets indicate that family-friendly policies and work-life balance policies were

distributed evenly across sectors or organizations. A study by Kargwell (2008) found that women received

little support from their organizations to help them to carry out their responsibilities. According to a

respondent in Kargwell study, the Ministry of Health initially did not provide any facilities to help her in

carrying out the burden of her twin roles. However, the officers did eventually provide her with

transportation facility only. Moreover, a qualitative research by Broadbridge (2008) also shows that most of

the organizations are not willing to provide any facilities to assist women carry out the dual role including

taking care of children and work at the office. Two of the three senior women with children in Broadbridge

study said that various work-home conflicts have caused barriers in their careers. The third woman in thisstudy mentioned that she has decided to put her career as her main priority but the organization did not

provide any facility, in order for her to improve on work performance and equally balance the time with

non-work matters.

According to Bond et al. (2002), larger companies are more likely to have formal policies but line managers

could eventually influence and become a barrier to employees and also act as a “gatekeepers to employees’

access”. It has been argued for some time that managers play an important role in the success of work-life

programs because they make implicit and explicit choices regarding the adoption of workplace practices

(Schneider, 1990). In addition, managers play a key role in the effectiveness of work-life policies and

programs because they may encourage employees to participate or discourage employees from participating

in these programs or because they may reinforce cultural norms that undermine employees’ efforts to

integrate their work and family lives (Thompson et al., 1992). In Bond et al. (2002) study, they found that

line managers often had discretion over application of family-friendly policies and this were often founded

upon considerable ignorance of both statutory requirements and organizational policies. There was some

evidence shows that even where formal policy had been introduced, its interpretation and implementation

was subject to informal and often uninformed line manager's discretion.

3.2 Networking

Shopping orientations are one of the most axiomatic concepts in consumer behavior literature which is

referring to the general predisposition of consumers toward the act of shopping. This disposition may be

manifested in varying patterns of information search, alternative evaluation, and product selection. The

orientations are operationalised by a range of attitude, interest, and opinion statements related to the topic of

shopping (Brown et al., 2003). Brown et al. (2003) suggested that it is logical that consumers possess

different shopping orientations and these will affect their purchase behaviors in Internet shopping, and price

comparisons are a major reason why consumers use Internet shopping. A study asserted that the Internet

lowers consumers’ search cost in acquiring information about prices and product offerings, and reduce

inefficiencies caused by buyer’s search cost. Therefore, Internet significantly reduces the search cost for a

price conscious consumer by providing rapid access to the information of the products or services (Girard,

Korgaonkar and Silverblatt, 2003). Based on the research findings on the cost savings and benefits gained byshopping on the Internet, the authors proposed that price-conscious customers would try to find the least

expensive items and reduce their search cost by purchase goods on the internet.





Some studies suggested that convenience is the main reason why consumers use the Internet for the purpose

of purchase (Brown et al., 2003). There is evidence to show that the Internet shoppers are convenience

oriented, variety-seeking, innovative, impulsive, and less risk averse than non-Internet shoppers. Earlier

studies also concluded that convenience shoppers are less traditional, less outgoing, and less socially

conscious (Girard et al., 2003). Perotti and Widrick (2005)f ound that customers' perceived convenience of

shopping on the Internet has a positive impact on online purchase behavior. Variety seeking consumers are

more willing to trade enjoyment for variety. A recent study suggests that when people are motivated to finda variety of products in order to try different things, they will prefer to shop on the Internet because the

Internet provides an environment with a variety of goods and services. Therefore, people who are seeking

variety are more likely to shop on the Internet (Girard et al., 2003).

Studies found that not all consumer behaviors are well planned. A person may buy merchandise on impulse

while walking down an aisle in a store, or may suddenly decide to go inside a store on impulse while

walking down the street (Girard et al., 2003). Some consumers have used impulse buying as an interesting

and spontaneous way to complete their grocery shopping, as their shopping lists were often incomplete

(Ramus and Nielsen, 2005). Impulse purchase is more likely to be for inexpensive or less expensive items

seen in a store environment while shopping for other goods (Girard et al., 2003). However, people are less

likely to buy on impulse on the Internet because online shopping is regarded as a much more planned andorganized (Ramus and Nielsen, 2005) activity. Some earlier studies have identified some persons who enjoy

shopping as a leisure activity and tend to browse in retail outlets “without an upcoming purchase in mind,”

such shoppers are named as “recreational shoppers.” They are interested in gaining knowledge about a

specific product and actively seek for product information such as price and product quality. An earlier

study on recreational shoppers reveals that while convenience or economic shoppers do not enjoy shopping

or harbor neutral feelings toward it, recreational shoppers are the people who enjoy shopping as a

leisure-time activity (Girard et al., 2003). There were some arguments that people who enjoy the shopping

process are unlikely to buy online, and that purchasing via the Internet is a poor substitute for the leisure

experience associated with the conventional shopping (Brown et al., 2003).

3.3 Mentoring Support

Mentoring is a term generally used to describe a relationship between a less experienced individual, called a

mentee or protégé, and a more experienced individual known as a mentor (Donaldson, et al., 2000).

Research has supported links between mentoring relationships and increased employee productivity,

enhanced organizational commitment (Aryee et al., 1996) and lower levels of turnover (Allen et al., 2004).

Thus, mentors are frequently characterized as individuals who are committed to providing support to junior

members in an effort to remove organizational barriers and to increase the upward mobility of their

protégé’s (Higgins & Kram, 2001). A study by Maxwell (2009) proved that mentoring programs can

enhance female Mentees’ career development subsequently contributing to improving the gender balance in

management. Maxwell further said that mentoring is about improving females’ opportunities and about

increasing the number of females in management.

According to Ragins (1989), mentoring relationships have been identified as a significant factor in the career

advancement of women, and barriers women face in obtaining such relationships in organizations has been

identified. Researchers consistently find that women experience barriers in gaining a mentor (Ragins &

Cotton 1991). Women in male-dominated organizations often have limited mentoring opportunities (Klenke,

1996). In addition, women had been socially excluded from informal mentoring relationships and had

greater difficulty acquiring informal mentors to the same extent as their male colleagues (Kanter, 1977). A

study by Kanter (1977) found that the male manager chooses to sponsor or mentored other males and not

females. Kanter (1977) used the term “homosocial reproduction” to refer to the situation of men choosing

other men. In the other words, men who occupy powerful positions preserve the status quo by sponsoring

other men thus reinforcing a gendered reproductive practice (Colley, 2002). Thus, the implication of

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women’s limited access to informal mentors was viewed as disadvantages because they were denied access

to this type of relationship and consequently missed out on the considerable benefits male mentors enjoyed

including improved career outcomes. Moreover, a study by Lee and Nolan (1998) found that 92.6% of the

female respondents felt that mentoring was important for women to assist them in developing their careers.

Although most of the female respondents in Lee and Nolan (1998) felt that mentoring was important for

women, but the study also found that 47% of women administrators surveyed did not report having mentors.

Therefore, there is an evidence proves that women have limited mentoring opportunities.

3.4 Training and Development

Training and development can be defined as the process of providing employees with specific skills or

helping employees to correct deficiencies in their performance. In addition, the training’s objectives are

helping the employees to improve or gain skills and knowledge that would help them in the job

performances and as well as improve their career advancement (Mondy and Noe, 2005). A study by Mondy

et al (2002) found that training and development are organizationally directed experiences designed to

improve employee competency levels and enhance organizational performance. The literature suggests thatmanagerial advancement is positively related to human capital credentials. According to Becker (1993),

human capital theory proposes that individuals choose to improve their education, training, and work

experience, which results in payoffs later in their careers in pay and job status. Apart from that, Becker

(1993) also discovered that education increases the managerial level and pay by increasing knowledge, skills,

and ways of solving problems, and productivity. Hence, education, training and work experience are said to

increase advancement. In addition, Burke and McKeen (1994a) mentioned that managerial women who

participate in a greater number of education and training activities are more likely organizationally

committed, job-satisfied and involved, and have higher career prospects. More specifically, women’s

advancement to senior management is directly related to their increased knowledge and skills and

professional development opportunities made available to them throughout their careers (Wentling, 2003).

On the other hand, Ragins and Sundstrom (1989) also found that training can develop knowledge, skills,

credentials, and credibility, and thus it will be beneficial for the promotion. Therefore, education and

training seem to have a great importance to the career development of women managers.

Besides that, a research by Morrison et al. (1987) indicates that managerial women should be given similar

opportunities for training and development as equivalence as men. It is common for women receiving less

training and development, less visible, challenging and risky job assignments, jobs that use skills such as

nurturing which are both traditionally female and historically less valued. For women, training may be an

essential source of expertise in managerial skills, which they may have little opportunities to gain through job assessment and work experience. Moreover, Jamali et al. (2006) emphasized that more middle women

managers agree that they have fewer opportunities for professional development than men in their

organizations. An interviewee in Wentling (2003) study stated that she spent four days on a management

development course for executives. The course was only attended by three women and the rest was male

executives who are in many cases had never worked with a woman executive. These results suggest that

middle level women managers are more pessimistic in terms of accessibility to career development

opportunities made available in their firms.

3.5 Women’s Career Advancement

Career advancement is usually conceived as promotions in management ranks and attainment of higher

management levels and pays (Miner, Chen, and Yu, 1991), and it was explained by organizational,





interpersonal, and individual theories. At the organizational level, new job hires are proposed to enter

opportunity structures of internal labour markets such as promotion ladders and job types that influence

opportunities for hierarchical advancement (Markham, Harlan, and Hackett, 1987). At the interpersonal

level, both mentors and networks relationships are said to facilitate career and personal development in

different stage of career development. Mentors are said to provide career and emotional support that

facilitates the career advancement at the early stages of career development. As career progresses, informal

social networks are said to facilitate advancement at all stages in career development (Burke and McKeen,

1994b). At the individual level, personal traits are said to influence the seeking of career advancement and

fit with career advancement (House, Howard, and Walker, 1991). Individuals’ human capital such as work

experience, training and development is proposed to increase productivity, and to be rewarded with higher

status and pay (Becker, 1975). Initial and continued advancement is thought to be enhanced by managerial

skills, and by the resulting high job performance (Locke, 1991). Family commitments, especially relevant in

child-rearing years, are said to result in multiple roles that may reduce women’s managerial advancement

(Ragins and Sundstrom, 1989).

Moreover, a research by Morrison (1992) stated that a small but increasing number of organizations haveimplemented practices to support and develop managerial and professional for women. These organizations

have reported positive outcomes such as increasing numbers of women now participating in key training and

development activities, increased in the number of women on the short list for promotions and increased in

the numbers of women achieving more senior positions. Therefore, there is an evidence to prove that

organizational training could assist women in their career advancement.

4. RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

This is a quantitative study and in term of its application, it is a cause and causal study. The population of

the study covers ten manufacturing firms in Klang Valley areas. The natures of these manufacturing firm's

businesses are food processing, packaging, automobile, marble manufacturing and paper manufacturing. The

unit of analysis for this study is individual female employees from middle level management in

manufacturing firms. The middle level management definition term may be varied from the organization to

organization. As such, the organization may define this category of employees based on their organizational

structure. In general, for the manufacturing industry, they could categorize supervisors, foremen, technicians

and line leaders as lower level. Meanwhile, executives and managers are categorized as middle level

management and position such as Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Chief Operation Officer (COO) and

General Manager (GM) are known as upper level management. The target sample in this study will be

female executives from manufacturing firms and whereby these firms classified them as employees from themiddle management based on their organizational structure.

The sampling method used to collect the data is of judgment sampling method. A total of 200 sets of

questionnaires was distributed to the manufacturing firms’ female executive via email and fax. However,

there are only 162 sets of the questionnaires received and the remaining questionnaires are not suitable

because it was not completed or does not meet the requirement. The minimum requirement of sample is one

variable to ten respondents (Hair, Anderson, Tatham & Black, 2006), thus a respondent size of 162 observed

in this survey is sufficient for this study. The present study is carried out using a quantitative survey with a

structured questionnaire. Primary data had been used and these data were collected by distributing

questionnaires to manufacturing firms’ female executives through email and fax. Telephone calls have been

made to some of the respondents as follow up and to who needs additional information pertaining to the

questionnaire.





Work-life Balance having the value of 3.9907 and 3.9673 respectively. This indicates that most of the

respondents are agreeable and perceive that networking and work-life balance are barriers to women’s career

advancement. The mean of Training and Development is 2.4219. It indicated that most of the respondents

are only attended 2 to 3 times training courses within the organization.

Before conducting any analysis of the data, the internal consistency for each variable used has been

examined by looking into their Alpha Cronbach’s score. Women’s career advancement has the value of

0.629. Work-life balance (0.869), mentoring support (0.839), networking and mentoring support have the

values of 0.665 and 0.839 respectively. Training and development, do not conduct any reliability test as it

measured by using the frequency of the training and development in the organization. Finally, the value of

Cronbach’s for all construct is accepted for further bivariate or even multivar iate analysis.

5.3 Correlation and Predictions

Prior to linear regression analysis, Pearson Product Moment Correlations were computed on selected pairs

of variables and this was conducted to test for direction and strength of the correlation between variables.

Examination of the correlation of the variables, women's career advancement was significantly related to

work-life balance (r = -0.528), training and development (r = 0.260). Then, linear regression was employed

to identify the predictor towards women's career advancement. A closer inspection of Table 2 found that the

F statistic for the overall goodness of fit of the model is 16.125, which is significant at α =0. 01. This

model explains 30% of the variance in financial satisfaction. This indicates that 30% of women's career

advancement was explained by the linear combination of the four predictor variables. After excluding the

non-significant variables, the final regression model produced by enter method is: women career

advancement = 3.100 – 0.343 (work-life balance).

Based on Pearson’s analysis result, work -life balance shows that work-life balance has negatively related

towards the women’s career advancement. As the coding for all the work -life balance are in negative

statements, this means that result was aligned with the study of Kargwell (2006) indicating women received

little support from their organizations to help them to carry out their responsibilities as female employees

had decided to give first priority to their families. This priority has led to a negative role of female

employees in their career progression and subsequently, it has contributed to their under-representation at

senior management level. Additionally, Worrall et al. (2010) have supported that lack of work-life balance

as a main barrier to women’s career advancement. Studies show that work life balance practices will assist

employees in balancing their work and family demands, which can in turn lead to enhanced employee

productivity and significant business improvements. An analysis by Dex, Smith, and Winter (2001) foundthat organizations offering parental leave enjoyed above average labour productivity, and that provision of

flexible work hours and telecommuting was associated with reduced turnover. In addition, Hughes (2007)

also mentions that an organization can benefit from helping employees to analyse and create work life

balance. Therefore, organization should adopt the work life balance practices such as flexible work hours;

job sharing, telecommuting; childcare benefits, on-site childcare centers, and eldercare benefits in order to

help female employees balance their work, non-work commitments then increase their productivity and lead

to significant business improvements.

Pearson Moment Correlation Test found that networking has no significant relationship to women’s career

advancement in this study. Interestingly, this study found out that most respondents have the difficulties in

building work relationships (also known as networking) especially with other female employees. The study

shows that most female employees experienced discrimination from other female employees and as such

they do not prefer working with female colleagues and higher-ranked female employees (refer to itemize





question in Table 1). This study has also found that women tend to feel difficult and challenging to deal with

other female employees but they feel more comfortable when communicating and working with male

colleagues or employees. Nevertheless, this preference is due to differences in gender. To drop a short note,

previous studies found that networking is indeed crucial in career advancement especially in men but not for

women in this study. This could be explained women’s development is unique and the use of a male model

which explains career success is not appropriate for women (Gallos, 1989).

Again, mentoring support has no significant correlation with women’s career advancement. Majority female

employees in the study felt that mentoring support does not assist them in their career advancement or a

barrier factor in the career advancement. A closer inspection towards the responses in mentoring support

might find that most of the respondents from the present study choose the scale of “not at all” and “to a

small extend”. A comparatively low score of means result implies that most of the females f rom the present

study prefer to not have mentoring support. The reason behind is less female holding senior management

position, thus the female at the executive level unable to get mentoring support from the female senior

managers. As a consequence, the female executives have no choice than be more independent and find the

other way out for career advancement.

6. CONCLUSION

This study aims to identify the predictor towards women's career advancement among Malaysia working

women. In conclusion, only one independent variable (work-life balance) has a significant relationship of

the dependent variable (women’s career advancement). Training and development did have significant

correlation with women’s career advancement but it was not a significant predictor in the regression model.

It is worth to note that both networking and mentoring support were not contributed towards women’s career

advancement in this study. As mentioned in discussion, the researchers come out with two conclusions that

(1) Malaysia working female has compensated their networking time with family responsibility at home and

(2), they prefer a female mentor but currently they are less female mentoring support in their organization.

Currently, under the Ninth Malaysia Plan (2006-2010), Malaysia government has strived to smooth the

progress of higher participation of women in the nation's labour force. In lines with the work-balance matter,

Malaysia government has come out with various efforts especially in providing training opportunities,

encouraging flexible working hours, longer maternity leave and creating a special window in existing

business financing programmers to those working female groups. In terms of laws and regulations, the

government also monitoring the existing laws and regulations that discriminate against women to increase

the number of participation of women in the workforce.

In the future, not only for Malaysia government, other nations would need to solve the consequences of the

increase proportion of women in labour force participation. Since more female indulge in formal labour

force participation, older persons have greater responsibility to take care of their grandsons at home. In

certain circumstances, the pressures on them are greater, due to the changes in the life cycle, such as the loss

of a spouse or a decline in health that affects older persons directly. In most of the times people choose to

work in order to obtain money to sustain their life and achieving their financial goal (Chan et.,al 2010).

Women choose to indulge in labour force participation mainly because of family expenditure needs.

However, when one partner of the marriage dies, the survivor might feel the financial stress. This risk

disproportionately affects older female workers, who are nearly three times as likely as older men to be

widowed in the United States (Burkhauser and Smeeding, 1991). This population has contributed to the

nation development and thus, Government or even non-government organizations (NGO) are urged to





provide a different social security system in securing the economic well-being among the female working

group.

Noorin and her colleague in year 2010 have studied the expenditure pattern among the single mothers in

Malaysia. Most of the respondents are working and the study revealed that single mother have spent, on

average, about 20% of their year income in reading materials for their own human capital purposes. Instead

of the formal trainings provided from the organization, this study calls for more efforts from both

government and non-government organizations to develop more informal human capital opportunities

among this working group enhancing their career advancement

A few limitations are identified and acknowledged while conducting the results. Firstly, the limitation in this

research is it only focused on the manufacturing industry. There are many industries such as banking,

education, service and tourism which were not included in this study. In additional, the scope of respondents

in this study just focused on female executive in the middle level management where in fact there are other

categories not yet to be focused. Besides, the unbalanced ratio of races of the female employees in executive

level that involve in this study does not show the actual scenario as the ratio of races of Malaysians is totallydifferent from the ratio in the study. As we all known, the largest portion of residents in Malaysia is Malay

followed by Chinese and Indians. The study is limited as it involves more Chinese female employees than

the Malay female employees. Apart from that for future research, it is recommended that other factors and

elements need to take into consideration, such as more broader field or industry, different level of female

employees, ratio of race in Malaysia and also corporate practices and corporate culture. By having a good

understanding of this research topic, it is our hope that we able to find an appropriate solution for gap of

imbalance between both genders in the upper-level management and thus increase the number of women’s

involvement in the upper-level management. As such, we hope the organization and employees could work

together for a better working environment and to ensure that women being treated fairly in every aspect of

the job related.

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Table 2: Summary of Multiple Regression Analyses for Women Career Advancement

VariablesUnstandardized Coefficients

StandardizedCoefficients t Sig.

B Std. Error Beta

(Constant) 3.100 0.396 7.833 0.000

Networking 0.025 0.061 0.029 0.409 0.683

Work-life Balance -0.343 0.052 -0.480 -6.662 0.000Mentoring Support 0.096 0.07 0.098 1.382 0.169

Training and Development -0.027 0.016 -0.121 -1.707 0.090

R square = 0.301 ,df = 4 ; F = 16.125 ; p = 0.000

Fig. 1 Research Framework: The barriers that hinder the career advancement of female employees.

a study on women's career advancement in malaysia

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