Margaret M. Chin (Faculty)

Prof. Chin’s recent book Stuck (NYU Press, 2020) was featured in SUM. 

“Why Asian Americans Have Trouble Climbing the Corporate Ladder”

Professor Margaret Chin (The Graduate Center, Hunter) got the idea for her new book, Stuck: Why Asian Americans Don’t Reach the Top of the Corporate Ladder, at a Harvard Club event in New York. A Harvard alumna herself, she was attending a reception for newly admitted students that included a large number of Asian Americans. An admissions officer observed privately that although thousands of second-generation Asian Americans have graduated from Harvard in the last 40 years, very few have become CEOs or attained other top leadership posts in corporate America.

“Is there a so-called bamboo ceiling, an invisible but powerful barrier that halts their progress at a certain point?” Chin wondered. She wrote Stuck in an effort to find out .

Chin says Asian Americans are underrepresented in executive suites despite census data showing they have the highest levels of education and highest average incomes of any U.S. racial group. Their absence from top jobs is true not only in law and finance, where Asian Americans remain a minority but also in fields like technology. Asian Americans outnumber whites in Silicon Valley but hold only a third the number of executive jobs in that field that whites hold.

Read more: https://sum.cuny.edu/why-asian-americans-have-trouble-climbing-the-corporate-ladder-bamboo-ceiling/