Women in Asia — follow the stereotypes and you'll be stuck in the groove by Michael Backman The Age August 23, 2006 WIVES, mistresses and prostitutes: that sums up the view that many outside Asia have of women in Asia. For business, it can be a costly view to hold. Asia's women are an important source of skills and often make more valuable and diligent employees than Asian men, not just as junior workers but as managers. Anecdotally, Asian women in business and government tend to be less susceptible to corruption than their male counterparts. And when it comes to corporate governance, they tend to be more diligent on compliance issues. Right across Asia, many audit teams are headed and dominated by local women, not without good reason. But none of this is particularly due to Asia modernising. Rather, it is deeply embedded in culture and history. So where in Asia do local women come to the fore when it comes to business? Perhaps counterintuitively, the answer is those parts that have been most influenced by Islam, particularly South-East Asia. But aren't women in business a contradiction in Islam? Not at all. The Prophet Muhammad's first and most cherished wife, Khadijah, was a trader. She came to know Muhammad and provided him with capital so that he could trade on her behalf in Syria. He returned with a good profit, so she decided that he would make a suitable husband. She also happened to be 15 years his senior. It's a stark contrast to the perversion that is Islam in Saudi Arabia today, where women are not even permitted to drive a car. This is not to say that women are equal to men in South-East Asia. It's more that men and women have different but well-defined economic roles; areas of competence that are mutually respected. Women still operate most of the stalls in markets across South-East Asia, for example, which suggests that they operate many and perhaps most of South-East Asia's small businesses. Rather than being docile and dependent, social institutions ensure that most women in South-East Asia are less economically dependent on men than in many other parts of the world, even if their prime role is as a wife. Dowries were — and in some cases still are — common across South-East Asia. Even today, marriages among Malays in Malaysia typically feature the groom's parents giving gifts of gold to the bride, but the tradition is sometimes misinterpreted. Rather than representing a purchase price, the gold is in fact a transfer of capital to the bride. She owns it and retains it. It allows her to be less dependent on her husband and, importantly, allows her to more easily exit the marriage if need be. Accordingly, the idea that family units are sacrosanct in Asia and that a high incidence of marriage breakdown is somehow a Western phenomenon is an absolute fiction. Divorce rates in South-East Asia have been among the highest in the world. Up until the late 1960s, they were in excess of 50 per cent among the Malays and other Muslims of Malaysia and Indonesia. According to expatriate Australian Professor Anthony Reid, this was not so much because Islam makes it easy for men to get rid of unwanted wives but because the wives usually had some capital of their own; they could afford to leave. Also, property was held by both husband and wife and administered jointly, rather than by the husband alone, as was the case in China and India. Thailand enshrined joint property administration in 1976 with the passing of the Family Law. Among Malay families, actual control of the family's finances is with the wife. Women rulers have not been unusual in South-East Asian history. They were seen as less likely to go to war, less likely to tax highly, and less prone to corruption. In recent times, the two East Asian countries that have had women heads of state have been in South-East Asia: Indonesia (President Megawati Sukarnoputri) and the Philippines (Presidents Aquino and Arroyo). There are many examples of women heading up companies in Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand. Compare this with India, where women chief executives are largely unheard of, particularly among locally owned companies. The appointment of Naina Lal Kidwais to head up HSBC in India was approved by India's central bank last week, but then, her employer is foreign owned. Also last week, Indra Nooyi was named the next CEO of PepsiCo, presiding over the worldwide Pepsi empire. But she had to leave India to do it, a country where the birth of a daughter is still considered bad luck. Not so in South-East Asia, where women have been active in commerce literally for centuries. They may not be the loudest in the boardroom but they might well be the sharpest. Watch out for them. ends