Diversity Research in Bhutan: The Land of the Thunder Dragon "Druk Yul" - Dr Mahan Poorhosseinzadeh 1 Professor Emeritus Glenda Strachan 2

Diversity Research in Bhutan:
The Land of the Thunder
Dragon “Druk Yul”

 Dr Mahan Poorhosseinzadeh 1
 Professor Emeritus Glenda Strachan 2
 1. Australian Institute of Business
 2. Centre for Work, Organisation and wellbeing, Griffith University

Origin of this Research
 Australia Awards South And West Asia (AASWA) with Griffith
  University
 Evaluating Workforce Learning and Development
  Initiatives in Bhutanese Organisations (2018 -2019)
 Primarily Focus on Gender, Diversity and Inclusion
 Funded by Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs
  (DFAT)

Research Background
The Question

 The representation of women in Bhutan’s professional
  workforce continues to increase but they remain
  underrepresented as managers, professionals and technical
  workers.
 A similar situation exists in Australia, so we were eager to
  examine the obstacles to women’s career advancement in
  Bhutan and whether there were similarities with the
  Australian context.

Geography of Bhutan:
6 valleys, each separated by a Himalayan mountain

Region and Religion
 “Closed kingdom” until 1970s
 Constitutional monarchy since 2008
 Eastern Bhutan (major region)
      Predominantly Buddhist region -75% of population
      Matriarchal
      Women are mostly educated, head of the family, breadwinners
      Women inherit property
      Female role models
 Southern Bhutan
      Patriarchal
      Influenced by Hindu and Nepalese culture and dominance of men
      Women move to their husband’s house
      Male children have a significant role in the family

Gross National Happiness Index
Bhutan’s current national policy is based on the Gross National Happiness
(GNH) Index which emphasises social welfare (Reinfeld, 2003). It is designed
to measure the collective happiness and wellbeing of the Bhutanese people.

The GNH is a people centric approach to development and is upheld by four pillars
that aspire to achieve:

   Pillar 1: Sustainable and Equitable Socio- Economic Development
   Pillar 2: Conservation of the Environment
   Pillar 3: Preservation and Promotion of Culture
   Pillar 4: Good Governance

Gender Equity Goals in Bhutan and The role of The National Commission of
   Women and Children
 The National Commission of Women and Children has a strategic policy and advisory role in
  support of gender equality to create an enabling environment and provisions for increasing
  women’s participation in decision making and in the workforce.

 Interventions focus on reducing women’s triple burden of home, care-work and
  employment through:

    –   institutionalizing six months of maternity leave to new mothers and designing incentives for the private sector to
        follow suit;
    –   encouraging longer paternity leave to inspire work sharing at home between men and women;
    –   creating a strict zero tolerance policy on sexual harassment
    –   creating care giving support structures such as fully serviced creches and nursing rooms for mothers.

 Design strategies with business associations that can help increase female representation at
  senior management levels in businesses.

Industry
                                            Labour Force
63% women in agriculture (46% men)
27% women in service sector (40% men)                           Public Service
9% women in industry (13% men)                                  •   Civil service & other govt agencies
                                                                    account for 10.9% of employment:
Occupation                                                          8.3% of female labour force & 13.0%
 Major Occupation                           Female %   Male %
 Skilled agricultural and forestry worker   63         46
                                                                    of male labour force
 Services and sales workers                 14         8.5
 Craft and related trade workers            7          6.5
                                                                (National Statistics Bureau, 2018 Labour Force Survey
 Professionals                              5          9
 Managers                                   2          5
                                                                Report Bhutan, 22-29)
 Other                                      8          25

Researching gender equity research in a culture
different from that of the researchers
“Aresearcher’s cognitive understanding of what they see” underpins the
conceptualisation and interpretation of the data (Cooke, 2018, p.5).

•    Do all research framing/questions/issues translate into a different cultural
     context?

•    Can we make a meaningful contribution to examining gender equity in
     Bhutan? Can we be “cultural interpreters”?

Literature Review
 According to Aktinson and Hammersley (1998) an interview is a social
  event. It displays cultural particulars (Silverman, 2013) and is determined
  by discursive relations and situatedness.

 The researcher influences the data collection and analysis (Griffiths, 1998)
  with the interviewee/s also participating in the knowledge building
  activity.
 Interviewees are informed by a knowledge of social sub-systems operative
  in that culture, but constant adaptations of the interview process are
  needed to suit each individual situation in relation to the participants’
  subjectivities. Objectivity, implying neutrality and detachment, is not
  possible on the part of the interviewer or the interviewee (Lincoln & Guba,
  1985).

Literature Review
 Face to face responses are not simply given to the questions, but reflect the
  interplay between how participants perceive the researcher posing those
  questions and themselves in that particular social context.
 Understandably, the implications of the participants’ (interviewee/interviewer)
  subjectivities in intercultural interviewing gain more complexity because of this
  additional factor of ‘communicating across cultures’ (Ting-Toomey & Dorjee, 2018).
 Researchers as “cultural interpreters” (Geertz, 1983) provide vivid descriptions that
  reveal beliefs, values and action in the society and organization, and aim to
  develop a better understanding of nature of the ‘reality’ as socially constructed
  through the interaction of social and national beliefs, values and actions in the
  broader society.

Field Research
 We reflect our role as researchers in a cross-cultural setting and the field
  challenges encountered when undertaking a study of diversity in a cross-cultural
  setting.
 Through the qualitative interviews in Australia and Bhutan, we became conscious
  of the different elements of Bhutan’s culture that had been unknown to us.
 The researcher who went to Bhutan was overcome by the difference in culture.
     Economic goals did not seem to subsume all else as an emphasis on social well-being and the
      preservation of culture were important.
 When we asked participants about the impact of GNP policies on gender equity
  policies, most participants did not really have an answer leading us to speculate
  that they did not understand a world where economic interests predominate.

Interviews in Bhutan
•    In Bhutan, we used similar questions to those developed for our Australian study, but we were
     immediately confronted with a challenge.
• The research questions did not elicit answers as readily as we expected. Both men and women responded
     that they did not believe gender discrimination existed in Bhutan/their organisation. Only after additional
     questions and examples from the Australian context were some interviewees able to expand on the
     situation in Bhutan.
Interviewer:
• As you have seen in the information sheet, our focus in this study is about women’s career progression, so I
     wondered about your thoughts on women’s career progression and women getting to management,
     whether there is any difference in their careers to those of men?
Participant:
• Bhutan is one nation where gender bias or gender equality and inequality is not there. We consider, as
     long as, he or she is capable, the place, or the position is open for all. Of course, again in saying that
     doesn’t mean that we would employ a woman for a job that requires a little bit of more of … heavy manual
     work otherwise there is no bar, no restriction at all.

Interviews in Bhutan
•    Female manager in the National Commission for Women and Children (NCWC) focused on gender
     issues from the beginning of the interview without any prompting.
Interviewer: Can you tell me about the societal and cultural expectations of women in Bhutan?
Participant:
• Culturally what Bhutanese expect of women is…to take care of the children, expect the food to be
     ready when the husband and the kids come back from school and office, wash their clothes, be
     socially involved in all the family activities and gatherings. Just be a good wife, that is what is
     culturally is expected….you are expected to serve your husband….If you find a husband cooking and
     things like that, people don’t say anything of course but … people say, it does not look good when
     your husband is cooking, especially if it is front of his mother or the older people….
• It still happens in my family when me and my husband go to our grandparents house which is in
     another district of Bhutan. So they always tell my husband to sit above or to eat or they ask me to
     serve for my husband. It is still there in small ways, culturally.
• Socially…I think people are now viewing women at par with the men, they view what men can do
     they can do as well, socially. But culturally, that cultural stigma is still there that women are
     supposed to be seen as home makers.

Reflections
 Perhaps we had not considered enough that the framing of the questions we were
  posing may not transfer as readily to a different cultural context. We hypothesise that in
  Australia discussions about ‘discrimination’ and ‘gender equity’ have existed in the
  social landscape for decades and therefore was easily understood. Australian female
  interviewees had lived experience of, and were alert to, observing these issues in their
  organisation. Australian male interviewees did not always respond without prompting.
Key recommendations for future research
 The need for researchers to critically contemplate and demonstrate their subjectivity -
  by writing reflexively. It is also important to critically reflect on how researchers’
  position themselves in writing up the research as well as the extent to which their
  identities construct and position their work.
 The benefits of undertaking in-country fieldwork.