By Deborah Woo
From The Glass Ceiling and Asian Americans: A Research Monograph
July 1994

Despite dramatic inroads made by Asian and Pacific Islanders into institutions of higher education, there has been converging evidence that education for Asian Pacific Americans often brings lower returns than it has for other groups, often increasing with education and age.  Gender differences account for some of the largest income discrepancies.  Foreign-born status also had a significant dampening effect on returns to education.

In what is believed to be the first consultation with Asian Pacific Americans ever sponsored by a federal agency, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights was presented in 1979 with testimony and data relevant to how educational success might camouflage problems in this population. In the area of employment, the high labor force participation of Asian Americans has often been viewed positively as a sign of low unemployment. Some of the early testimony during this consultation, however, pointed to underemployment among both longtime residents and recent immigrants.  High rates of labor participation of a particular variety (e.g. enclave and family-owned businesses) may actually disguise a certain amount of underemployment created by mainstream employer discrimination practices. The inability to find jobs opportunities commensurate with one's education and training may be a reason that Asian American families also tend to have more wage earners. Asian small businesses, moreover, frequently have a number of unpaid family members, critical to their operation. Viewed by the larger public as symbols of "successful" entrepreneurship, they were characterized by participants at this consultation as a form of disguised unemployment and underemployment, affecting even those with professional training and education.

In general, inferences about mobility from educational data alone were found to be misleading. Indeed, occupational patterns of Asian American professionals, presumably models of upward mobility, suggested barriers resembling a "glass ceiling." For example, in 1979 college-educated Asian American women were concentrated in clerical jobs, part of a larger picture and pattern of occupational segmentation and concentration among Asian Americans.  Such findings not only called into question popular stereotypes of Asian Americans as an upwardly mobile and rapidly assimilating minority but showed the relationship between education and occupational attainment to be problematic or uncertain, and suggestive of "artificial barriers" associated with a glass ceiling: "those well-educated and considered to have successfully entered the primary sector of the labor market are found to be in only certain jobs that are race-typed...segregated consistently by racial prejudice, lower salary schedules, restricted upward mobility, and inferior employment status and benefits."

In general, the state of knowledge on Asian Americans was deemed to be poor, attributable not simply to the prevalence of cultural stereotypes, but to the presence of institutional barriers that prevented their participation at critical levels of decision-making which would influence the nature of data-gathering. Underrepresentation in key decision-making bodies at the federal level was cited as a critical reason for the relative absence of sensitive measures and useful data. At this conference, Ling-chi Wang, a professor at the University of California, Berkeley, underscored the absence of any comprehensive federal study on Asian Americans, together with the "conspicuous absence of Asian Americans on Federal commissions, boards, councils, advisory committees, and task forces," including the staffs of the Commission before which he spoke:

...Federal Government agencies responsible for collecting data, investigating violations, and enforcing civil rights laws have come up with virtually no comprehensive report or study about Asian Americans. Whether it be this Commission, the Office of Federal Contract Compliance, EEOC, the Census Bureau, the Bureau of Labor Statistics, and on and on with all the researching arms of the various departments within the Federal establishment, we have found very little of any usable type of information on Asian Americans. In other words, Asian American problems have been totally ignored by the Federal establishment by virtue of the absence of data... Absence of high level Asian Americans in these crucial agencies effectively render the Asian American community ineligible for needed resources and services.

In sum, lower returns on education and continued occupational segregation, including exclusion from policy-making positions, qualified the view that historical discrimination had been ameliorated with the institutionalization of legal protections, if not the passage of time. As already noted at the beginning of this section, more recent research lends further support for the view that while Asian Americans seem to be approaching earnings or occupational parity, lower returns on education significantly qualify this picture.

Although various studies have noted lower returns on education for Asian Americans, there is no consensus on the reason for, or explanation of, the barriers. The theoretical perspectives which have been offered to account for such patterns have for the most part acknowledged two broad kinds of explanations for barriers to mobility -- personal, cultural, or group attributes, on the one hand, and organizational or institutional practices, on the other. This analytical distinction is implicitly acknowledged where a distinction is drawn between "attitudinal" and "organizational" bias, "employee" and "employer" characteristics, between "socialization" and "social treatment," or between "human capital" models and more institutional or "structural" approaches.

"Personal" or "Group Deficits" as Barriers

Barriers to mobility that focus on personal or group "deficits" generally assume deficiencies in the attributes of the candidate up for promotion. Whether these barriers are features of "individual" employees, or more salient as "group" or "cultural" traits, employee qualifications are best evaluated in relation to a particular work context and its requirements, rather than as static qualities. For this reason, even though managerial effectiveness may call upon certain human relations skills, these qualities are not abstract considerations, but occur in the context of a particular relationship to the organizational culture and its other employees. Thus, even racial-ethnic groups in the same organization had very different perceptions of the barriers experienced by the other.

In one study which sought to elicit the views of different racial-ethnic groups on barriers experienced by minorities, whites were less likely than any other group feel that race discrimination was a barrier, although to the extent that this was acknowledged, they were most likely to agree (36%) that minorities were "excluded from informal networks by Whites." These discrepancies in perception were patterned in other ways. For example, 58 percent of Asian employees felt that minorities employed at their company had to be "better performers than Whites to get ahead," whereas only 32 percent of whites agreed with this view. Similarly, 57 percent of Asian employees concurred with the statement that "In general, People of Color have a harder time finding a sponsor, or mentor, than Whites," compared to only 35 percent of whites who thought so. In a study of scientists and engineers, whites were more likely to rate opportunities for advancement as "excellent" or "good," and race relations as "excellent" or "good," with few here aware of job dissatisfaction among Asian Americans. More than 80 percent, in fact, felt no special effort was needed to increase opportunities for Asian Americans to enter administrative positions.

In general, a recurring theme in this and other studies is that differential treatment is accorded Asian Americans because of deficiencies in language or interpersonal skills, and because they are not otherwise seen as management material. Perhaps most significant is the fact that even where language problems are acknowledged by Asian Americans to be personal deficiencies, perceptions of discriminatory treatment are also strong.

In a recent survey of Asian American employees in Silicon Valley, respondents who were asked to identify the "main obstacle in career advancement" named the following employee characteristics as barriers: written and verbal communication skills (25%), lack of role models (18%), interpersonal interaction styles (17%), and leadership ability (11%). When asked to identify all "company characteristics" which created obstacles, however, there was a strong perception of unequal treatment: "arbitrary and subjective promotional processes" was the single most frequently mentioned barrier to career advancement (40%), followed by lack of encouragement from supervisors (30%), lack of role models (30%), and racial prejudice and stereotypes (25%). The fact that "lack of role models" appears as an obstacle both at the level of "employee" and "company" characteristics underscores both the importance of culturally relevant role models and the noticeable structural absence of Asian Americans in managerial positions.

Whether or not poor English is also accompanied by language discrimination, it is a major barrier for foreign-born or recent immigrants. In addition, cultural differences in social histories or backgrounds constrain even the most informal socializing, where social interaction assumes a shared frame of reference. Thus, the following Asian American explained how cultural differences made it hard to comfortably intermingle in certain social circles:

Even though I'm a U.S. citizen, in some ways I was still a "foreigner" in America because of language and culture... It's not just because I can't speak English well... In Taiwan, I can mix in much easier. I can tell or understand jokes, or politics. In America, we had no common background (with white male executives).

The fact that lower returns on education have been observed not only for those with alleged language problems but for more acculturated or assimilated Asian Americans weakens the argument that a glass ceiling is due simply or primarily to individual or group deficits, and specifically, lower qualifications in terms of English language facility. Japanese Americans have assimilated along a number of dimensions, and yet a pattern of inequality and lower returns on education was observed vis-a-vis whites of equivalent qualifications. Thus, for the decades from 1950 to 1970, Eric Woodrum reported that minority disadvantage was a persistent feature.

Japanese Americans were overrepresented relative to whites in professional and technical jobs and underrepresented in managerial and official jobs for their educations in 1950 and 1960. By 1970 they were significantly underrepresented in both high-status occupational categories in view of their education. Income returns on advanced education and income returns for professional and managerial work have consistently been lower for Japanese then for white Americans... An irony substantiated by these findings is that precisely those college-educated, professional Japanese Americans celebrated as exemplifying an "assimilation success story" systematically receive less prestigious, authoritative employment and less financial compensation than similarly qualified whites.

A comparative look at the career histories of Asian and white engineers in the 1980's similarly found that native-born Asians were at a relative disadvantage. While closing the earnings gap, they were underrepresented in management, and their relative absence in upper echelon positions could not be explained by educational qualifications. Instead, the data pointed to "a fairly large mismatch between career status and qualifications in the native-born Asian workforce." Perhaps most revealing is the fact that they were relatively less well located even when compared to foreign-born, immigrant whites.

.... it is striking to learn that native-born Asians are more likely to be in the lower echelons of the engineering profession than foreign-born Caucasians.... While formal schooling and technical training are important for the minority population to gain access to high-paying professions, these qualifications are insufficient for native-born Asians engineers to achieve upward mobility.

This racial difference in managerial presence persisted even when certain factors that might account for this pattern were "controlled for." As Joyce Tang explained: "A low tendency for native-born Asians to be managers cannot be attributed to their lack of human resources, placement in undesirable sectors, or uneven field distribution....the underrepresentation of native-born Asians in management suggests that neither mastery of English nor familiarity with American labor market practices is the key to achieving higher occupational status."

Other research similarly has indicated that even with English skills, U.S. citizenship, comparable or superior levels of education, Asian Americans continued to earn less than their white counterparts in same occupations, and the cost of being an immigrant was greater if one were Asian than white. The fact that foreign-born whites faced no such blocked mobility suggests racial barriers or the possibility that European employees with English-language difficulties are treated differently.

The role of gender, and the "cost" of being an Asian American woman, is another issue which captures the problem of discerning the extent to which alleged deficiencies are the product of cultural socialization, or differential treatment due to social intolerance or discrimination. In the above Silicon Valley survey, Asian American women indicated that they were less likely to experience discrimination due to race: compared to 59 percent of males who believed their promotional opportunities were limited for this reason, 44 percent of Asian American women felt this way. It is possible that these women may not report as much race discrimination because some of the barriers are experienced as gender-related.

In sum, personal, cultural, or other group deficits are reasons which have been offered to explain promotional barriers. Survey responses have underscored Asian American employees' perceptions of barriers, which include not only language deficiencies but external barriers such as arbitrary or subjective evaluations, the absence of mentoring or sponsorship, and exclusion from informal networks. Obstacles to career advancement cannot be attributed to simple cultural parochialism or clannishness. In the above Silicon Valley survey, 36 percent of Asian Americans felt excluded or unwelcomed when they sought entry to networks outside their own circles. Finally, not all experienced obstacles to promotion, and it should be noted that in this same survey, 27 percent saw no obstacles to advancement. A profile of such individuals would be useful, as would be a profile of those who have actually made it into management. Differences in upward mobility, however, may also signal barriers that are not only personal but external, including more structural or institutional barriers.

Occupational Segmentation: Industry or Institutional Tracking as a Barrier

An alternate theory to explain a glass ceiling is that lower returns on education are due to barriers which are more structural or institutional in nature. Educational achievement, as a qualifying "attribute," would have indirect implications for mobility through its influence on occupation or sphere of employment.

How individuals are initially positioned within an industry has important implications for mobility. Asian Pacific women in Silicon Valley are concentrated in jobs as operatives or laborers, earning less than both white men and women. For Asian Americans in general, different industries are tiered and show their concentration at the lower end of the occupational scale or in less than desirable sectors.

In the transportation, communication, and public utility industries, and in finance, insurance, and real estate, Asian/Pacific Americans predominantly are clerical workers; and in the service industries, Asian employment is high in hotels, restaurants, and health services, however, they are mostly food and cleaning service workers. In hospitals they are mostly nurses rather than physicians, and even in the ranks of nurses, discrimination apparently exists."

While lack of education is a barrier for operatives or laborers, specifically relevant for the issue of a glass ceiling is that even among those with professional training, lower returns were a pattern.

The first systematic study to analyze how industry concentration might present a form of discriminatory employment for Asian Americans found that low wages among Asian Americans could be attributed to a combination of "low-employment in high-wage industries" and "high employment in low-wage industries." Even in retail trade, where they are known to concentrate more other groups, they were most likely to be in low-wage rather than high-wage sectors. Summarizing these findings for the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights two years later, in 1979, Amado Cabezas pointed out that Asian American employment was "one-half of parity in 12 of the 17 major manufacturing industries in the area..." Moreover, Asian Americans were "below parity as managers even in industries where they are above parity as professionals and technicians." Other research has also suggested that lower pay and lower occupational status among college-educated Asian Americans can be attributed to industry or occupational segregation.

Occupational concentration or clustering along racial and ethnic lines does not in and of itself imply restricted access or mobility, or artificial barriers. Indeed, in terms of their representation in managerial and professional occupations, Asian and Pacific Islanders appear to be doing comparatively well: 31.2 percent of API males were in some "managerial and professional specialty," compared to 27.4 percent of white males. The following table shows this occupational distribution disaggregated for Asian Pacific Islanders, with Asian Indians more likely (43.6%) to cluster here than any other subgroup. As noted earlier, managerial status for Asian Americans often means self-employment.

Managerial-professional status for minorities in the mainstream, however, has often meant a different occupational distribution, with inequality implied. For example, given that Pilipino Americans (both foreign-born and U.S.-born) were also found to have lower income returns on their education, one explanation might lie in this differential occupational distribution and the opportunities that inhere in the trajectories of certain ladders or tracks. Their distribution in managerial-professional jobs was distinct from that of native white men:

... Pilipino men mostly were accountants, civil engineers, and electrical engineers, while women mostly were registered nurses, elementary school teachers, and also accountants. Few Pilipinos were found among public administrators, financial managers, marketing managers, physicians, attorneys, architects, aerospace, industrial, and mechanical engineers, computer analysts, natural scientists, social scientists, and social workers -- occupations which showed high concentrations of native white men.

The appearance of Asian American males in "professional and technical" jobs has in the past meant their concentration into two or three areas within the professional/technical category, namely, engineering, accounting, and health technology. In 1990, they continued to cluster in these areas: 31 percent of Asian Pacific Islander males in professional specialties were engineers, as compared with 20 percent of white males. As "accountants and auditors," API males continued to cluster here more than white males: 15 percent, compared to only 9 percent of white males in such management-related occupations. In the health professions, 12.7 percent of API males were physicians, compared to 5.7 percent of white males. API females in professional specialty occupations were overwhelming concentrated (29%) as registered nurses.

As managers, Asian Americans tend to be distributed in different tracks, such as research and development (R&D). Food management also appeared as an area of concentration: 15 percent of API men are food managers, compared to 7 percent of whites who are managers in food service. A more dramatic point of contrast and inequality is at the level of chief executive officers: of all persons who were CEOs in public administration, 58.7 percent were white males, compared to only 1.4 percent of API, men and women included.

Some of this depressing effect on mobility has been explained in terms of "crowding hypothesis": high numbers of individuals concentrated in a particular occupational field is said to have a negative effect upon wages. This possibility has been offered to explain the lower wages of Asian females, including the college-educated, who are concentrated in the lower-tier, primarily clerical, occupations of generally high-wage industries. While it is often in those professional career tracks where Asian Pacific Americans are "crowded" or heavily represented that a glass ceiling is often found, blocked mobility may be also due to the limited opportunities available in these particular tracks.

Differential mobility has been attributed not only to crowding but to "dual hierarchies," where Asian Americans are channelled in a number of ways. According to Yvonne May Lau, they were often "into staff, not line positions," or otherwise "pressured into accepting positions in the relatively unfavorable specialties," such as R & D (research and development) positions where promotions seemed to follow a slower pace. This kind of segregation would also explain their ignorance of corporate culture and the inside knowledge of other reward systems which other careerists possess. Even where Asian Americans were specifically selected or recruited for imputed linguistic or cultural abilities, these managerial appointments were not necessarily desirable, limited to supervising all-Asians or to overseas job assignments, appointments which also suggested stereotypical assessments of cultural capabilities.

Since detailed information on occupational distribution tends to be aggregated from different work settings or organizations, the implications of these data on occupational distribution are by no means always clear-cut. In an effort to assess the effect of clustering into certain jobs or sectors of the economy, Charles Hirschman and Morrison Wong controlled for sector of employment, along with other variables. As they explain, "Less visible are the inequalities that are maintained by segregated institutional frameworks. Systematic differences in earnings can arise if minorities are disproportionately concentrated in firms and settings that pay less for the same qualifications and performance. " Yet, even when sector of employment was controlled for, they were unable to identify the nature of the barriers. Their conclusion, however, strongly supported the existence of a glass ceiling: "What did prove to be a fairly important mechanism across all ethnic minorities... was the unequal participation in the occupational hierarchy. If minorities with the same resources and opportunities...as whites were able to reach the same mark on the occupational ladder, earnings inequality would be reduced substantially."

The case of foreign medical doctors illustrates how occupational segmentation and tracking have consequences for long-term professional development and mobility. The marginalization of Korean immigrant doctors, for example, has been attributed to their relegation not only to medical institutions that were less attractive or remunerative, but to practices in specialties that were similarly more marginal or low-paying:

...Korean medical doctors are heavily concentrated in several specialities that American-born doctors usually avoid...62 percent of Korean immigrant doctors have been forced to choose such nine "fringe" specialties as anesthesiology, psychiatry, obstetrics and gynecology, pediatrics, radiology, pathology, physical medicine and rehabilitation, and general practice. Ambitious American-born graduates have avoided making a professional career out of these relatively low-paying specialties. In contrast, only about 15 percent of Korean doctors have managed to acquire positions in the eighteen "core" specialties that are included under the general titles of "medicine" and "surgery." Korean physicians have functioned as a backstop to American-born doctors in staffing hospitals. At the same time, American medical institutions have been reluctant to offer residencies in "core" specialties to Korean immigrant doctors, who have a different educational and cultural background.

Foreign-trained medical professionals often experience lower mobility than U.S.-trained doctors, because of the fact that when they enter this country, they usually are located within the less prestigious hospitals within the medical system:

... foreign interns are disadvantaged relative to U.S. natives in terms of both the prestige of their jobs and the quality of their on-the-job training. Because physicians in the U.S. usually remain in the kind of hospital in which they entered the U.S. internship/residency system, most foreign doctors do not "catch up" to their native peers in terms of occupational prestige within that system.

The credentialling process, another barrier for foreign medical graduates, will be discussed in the following section.

In sum, where it has been possible to take a closer look at the occupational distribution of Asian Pacific Americans, one finds a pattern of occupational segmentation. Where these concentrations lead to dead-end careers, organizational or institutional tracking may present itself as a systematic barrier. A deficit model, however, has tended to dominate or preempt the exploration of such institutional barriers.

The Credentialling Process: Formal Barriers for Foreign Educated Health Professionals

The credentialling process surrounding foreign-trained health professionals was an objectively identifiable barrier, capturing a more general debate about whether certain standards or requirements are "artificial," arbitrary, or unrelated to job performance.

Asian Pacific Americans are disproportionately represented as health professionals. While only three percent of the total U.S. population in 1990, they make up 10.8 percent of practicing physicians and 4.4 percent of registered nurses. Many of them have degrees from U.S. health programs. By contrast, two thirds of all Asian Pacifics in the United States receive their degrees from foreign medical and nursing schools. For this reason, the credentialling process has not only been a major barrier, but one which disproportionately affects Asian Pacific Americans. Whereas Europeans had previously formed the bulk of these graduates, by the early 1980's FMGs from Asian countries made up nearly half of these FMGs. Foreign-trained nurses (FNGs) are also predominantly Asian Pacific (about three-fourths), with a large majority coming from the Philippines.

During the 1960s, there was an overall deficiency in the distribution of health care in the United States, with a particular need for high-level professional service workers who could deliver medical care to America's rural and urban inner-city populations. Most American-born doctors were not only highly specialized but geographically concentrated in more profitable private and group practices in suburban institutions. To fill the void in general practitioners, Asian foreign-medical graduates were initially recruited through preference categories in the immigration law and later through liberal licensing laws. The relationship between foreign medical graduates and American-born or trained medical doctors was, in this sense, "complementary" rather one of direct competition.

As the demand for trained health professionals was met, licensing requirements became stricter beginning in the 1970's, thereby "devaluing" medical degrees from foreign medical schools, with a disproportionate effect on graduates from India, the Philippines, Pakistan, and Korea, who began immigrating in large numbers after 1965. Proponents or defenders of these new and stiffer requirements felt these changes were necessary for protecting professional standards.

From the point of view of foreign medical graduates, however, these recent licensing and certification requirements constituted an artificial barrier, unwarranted by other indicators of their competency to practice. The U.S. General Accounting Office, for example, found no difference in the performance record of foreign medical graduates, as compared with U.S. medical graduates. Qualifying one for practice in the United States meant meeting stiffer certification, licensing, or endorsement requirements than those faced by U.S. medical graduates, e.g. more tests or examinations, longer periods of postgraduate training or residencies.

The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights has reported that parties representing various sides of this issue have agreed on the need to establish a national clearinghouse of information that will ease the documentation process on educational background and credentials. There have also been efforts to move towards a more uniform pathway towards licensure and to propose legislation that will reduce differential treatment in other aspects of job training, e.g. the granting of clinical or hospital privileges, allocation of residency positions, or the hiring for staff positions.

The proposals for change surrounding the credentialling process implicitly acknowledge the lower returns to education brought by specific institutional policies. The credentialling process is perhaps a more "visible" barrier than other institutional barriers which make for "glass ceiling." For example, Ong and Azores note that the concentration of Asian Pacific American health professionals in public hospitals gives them few opportunities to further train, develop their skills, or prepare for licensing exams. In either case, their disproportionate underrepresentation in supervisory positions in the medical and nursing professions suggests a glass ceiling. Thus, reporting on their three major public hospitals in Los Angeles, Ong and Azores note: "Asian Pacific Americans comprise 34 percent of the professionals (physicians and nurses), 28 percent of supervisory professionals (e.g. Supervising Clinic, Staff or Surgery Nurse, or Senior Physician), but only 12 percent of management positions (Chief Physicians, Directors of Nursing, or Nursing Directors). There is no simple explanation for this discrepancy..."

Summary

To summarize this general discussion on lower returns to education, there is little question that higher education and educational specialization have already facilitated the entry of Asian Americans into certain professional occupations, industries, or sectors of the economy. According to data made available in the Statistical Record of Asian Americans, there is some evidence of an association between education and representation at the managerial levels. Thus, 22.9 percent of Asian Pacific American men with four or more years of college were in executive, administrative, and managerial workers, as opposed to 16.6 percent of those with only one to three years of college. A similar pattern held for women: 19.3 percent of Asian American women with four or more years of college were listed as executive, administrative, and managerial workers as compared to 9.8 percent of their counterparts with only one to three years of college.

While statistics on both educational attainment and occupation are separately available, information on the relationship between educational attainment and occupational status tends not to be compiled in this way. More importantly, if comparisons are to be made about the relationship between education and managerial representation for different groups, then information on the general population, especially white males, is critical. In the Statistical Record of Asian Americans, mentioned above, there were no comparable figures enabling one to assess the relative importance of education for white male mobility. At the same time, survey data have indicated a strong perception among Asian American professionals that they are frequently passed over for promotion by those with less education, training, and years of experience. Former EEOC member, Joy Cherian, underscored in no uncertain terms the fact that criteria for advancement are often differentially applied. The following case was illustrative of how educational credentials were less a requirement for white males:

If it is not the glass ceiling then I don't know what it is when an Asian American with extensive supervisory experience, with two masters degrees, with highly successful performance in the same position on an acting basis, is denied a permanent position as Division Chief at the GS-14 level in a federal government agency by the same selecting official who had rated him highly successful. That Asian American was passed over in favor of a White male with a high school education and little managerial experience.... The evidence showed that the same selecting official had earlier passed over another Asian American with almost identical qualifications, in favor of...another White male with a high school education.

In a more well-known case, David Lam, now a Silicon Valley entrepreneur, was passed over for promotion in 1979 when he worked for Hewlett-Packard. The candidate chosen over him was a white male he had personally hired and trained just eleven months prior. Lam eventually left to found his own semiconductor and software firm.