Early this year, Forbes magazine named five Thai women among its list of the 50 most powerful businesswomen in Asia. Of the Southeast Asian countries, Thailand was the only one to have five on the list. Singapore had four, Indonesia and the Philippines three each and Malaysia two.
The latest edition of "Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women in the Boardroom", a global study on gender parity in the boardroom by global law firm Paul Hastings LLP corroborates the Forbes findings. In Asia, Thailand was the highest-ranking country for women's participation on corporate boards at 9.7%.
This bodes well for Thailand. After all, a recent study by the consultancy McKinsey found advancing women's equality could add US$12 trillion to global growth.
In the larger business environment, there may still be an inadvertent bias against women due to the jobs and assignments they had before despite promotions being based on merit.
Promotions are based on a supervisor's evaluation of what we could call "promotability" -- while people are promoted in part because they have performed well in their current jobs, they also move up after having undertaken challenging tasks.
People who have had challenging job experiences tend to be viewed as more capable, more willing to make the effort and more ambitious to reach higher-level positions.
Challenging assignments provide opportunities to learn, which are likely to result in the development of a wide range of skills, abilities, insights, knowledge and values that contribute to effective management skills and, hence, career success.
Often, however, the underlying assumption is people initiate and choose to take on such challenging job assignments. But why would that be the case? What if such tasks are assigned by supervisors who are not gender blind in their assignments? Would this affect promotability?
First, interestingly, research shows that men and women differ in how they approach challenging tasks. Women are, indeed, less inclined to take up challenging tasks than men, as they want to avoid failure. Men, on the other hand, are more willing to take up such tasks, as they want to show what they can do.
This is a difference that could stem from upbringing. Parents cheer a son when he is active -- climbing a tree, for example -- but would caution a daughter to be careful and instead come down from that tree. Such differences in upbringing affect one's willingness to take on challenging tasks as adults.
Of course, there are the women who are eager to take on challenges. However, they face obstacles, as research has also shown that supervisors are more inclined to allocate less challenging tasks to female employees regardless of their ambition and job performance.
Delegating assignments to employees involves risks, and to reduce such risks managers often delegate difficult tasks to those they trust to do well -- specifically, subordinates who are like them, are perceived to be similar to them and, hence, more trustworthy and capable.
As most higher positions are occupied by men, they see male subordinates as more similar to themselves than female subordinates. As such, male supervisors allocate more challenging tasks to male rather than female employees -- a form of subtle gender discrimination they may not even be aware of.
In short, we are in a situation where women may both avoid and be denied important developmental opportunities, which in turn hampers their chances of promotion and career advancement.
It is worth saying again that to stay competitive, organisations must capitalise on all valuable resources including talented male and female employees.
Women's failure to advance can be costly and shortsighted. There may be lost productivity and high turnover rates because women feel blocked in their careers.
Particularly, we need to ensure managers overcome supervisory gender bias.
They should be encouraged to assign challenging work equally to their male and female subordinates.
At the same time, women should be made aware of their propensity to take up less-challenging tasks and the adverse consequences these choices have on their careers.
Parents should also be mindful in how they bring up their children.
Both sons and daughters should be encouraged to embrace challenging tasks.
Such structures are already in place within Thai culture and mindsets.
Thai women are proving they are as capable of taking on leadership positions as their male counterparts.
As more women become educated, it is likely we will see even more Thai women occupying more seats in the boardrooms.
Irene E. de Pater is an assistant professor of management and organisation at the National University of Singapore Business School.