Asians are not underrepresented in tech, and some diversity initiatives don’t include them. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t still massive barriers to overcome. In our new report on women of color in tech, we found that Asian women reported worse outcomes than white women, often by a wide margin. In fact, Asian women’s experience was far closer to that of other women of color than to that of white women.
East Asian women (e.g. Chinese) were 66% less likely than white women to report seeing a long-term future for themselves at their companies—and, of course, prior research shows that white women are far less likely than white men to do so. East Asian women also reported lower levels of engagement and career satisfaction than white women, and were up to 42% more likely to report being demeaned and disrespected, stereotyped, left out of the loop, and treated like they were invisible—experiences much closer to those of Black than white women. East Asian women also reported other patterns related to lack of advancement: They were 47% more likely to have had their competence and commitment questioned after they had children, and 38% more likely to have had difficulty getting administrative support. All this fits in with emerging research that East Asians are highly underrepresented in leadership positions, although South Asians are not.
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