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Ticket to Ride
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BREAKING GLASS BORDERS
When Anne Abaya went to Tokyo in July 2000 to head GE Asia Human Resources, she went with a personal charge from then-CEO Jack Welch to recruit talented employees, and especially women. One of her proudest moments was starting the Japan GE Women's Network. Abaya first gathered senior women employees in Japan for a dinner with Welch and told them that as the leading women of GE Japan, they had a responsibility. "And it worked," Abaya recalls.

Abaya, who was promoted to senior vice president at GE after her service in Japan, says she hadn't realized how difficult it was for Japanese women to succeed in business. "There are so many obstacles," says Abaya, who found she had a sort of exemption from Japanese gender stereotypes because of her status as an expatriate American. "Working in Japan as a foreigner who is a woman was not difficult," Abaya says. "We can get away with more, be more bold, be more outspoken."

Abaya's story illustrates what Catalyst's Sabin calls the shattering of glass borders: Women break down barriers for one another, with American women's expatriate status bending the more rigid gender stereotypes of some cultures.

Natividad sums it up this way: "Nine times out of 10, women executives do tend to open up doors for other women, whether they do it consciously or not."

INTERNATIONAL LESSONS
Then there's the excitement of travel and discovery. JoAnn Kurtz-Ahlers was sitting on a train to Osaka when she discovered a tenet of Japanese business that shocked her American sensibility. "There was this big announcement on the speaker; I thought something really was wrong," says Kurtz-Ahlers, who was vice president of sales and business development for Ritz-Carlton in the Middle East and Europe at the time. It turned out the lengthy announcement wasn't a terrorism threat or rerouting; the train would simply be three minutes late. "I think my mouth fell open," Kurtz-Ahlers says. "Can you imagine apologizing like that for being three minutes late? I really had to sit and think about that."

Learning these day-to-day details of how people in other regions live their lives – and what they expect to happen when they check into a hotel – taught Kurtz-Ahlers valuable lessons about how to treat Asian guests, a priceless insight for her now as she heads up Kurtz-Ahlers & Associates, which consults for luxury resort properties in exotic locales.

"Executives tend to think alike," she says. "When you go into other environments and you see the customs and how people use products, you get very creative when you come back."

TALK ISN'T CHEAP
Asking for international assignments – and telling management about higher ambitions – can do a lot for a woman's career.

Women, it turns out, need to ask because everyone assumes women don't want to relocate as much as men. "Women find themselves having to be much more forceful and direct about getting their international assignments," Sabin says. A Catalyst study found that 42 percent of women said they had to ask to work overseas. "Only 29 percent of the men said that," she adds.

Talk isn't cheap. Talking about one's ambitions and asking for international experience can lead to valuable rewards. Sometimes, as in Abaya's case, the reward can be a senior executive job.

International experience can propel women to the topmost corporate rungs, where moving just one level can nearly triple salaries. For instance, the average compensation for a director of marketing is $135,000; at the  next level, marketing vice president, that figure is $330,000, according to Compensation Resources Inc.

To find an international assignment with a measurable goal that uses your talents in a new way, Sabin advises, "Make sure it's a business challenge as well as a cultural challenge."

For instance, Coca-Cola's Bayne was working in brand management and consumer strategy before her posting in Australia, where she strengthened her skills in retail marketing. Eventually that led to an opportunity to head up Coca-Cola U.S. marketing for McDonald's, a customer Bayne had worked with while overseas. "I think people often expect to be told what their next move is," says Bayne, who advises women to have a long-term career plan. That way, "you attract the offers that make sense," she adds.

International experience can also lead to new options outside of the corporation. After her Middle East experience, Kurtz-Ahlers left Ritz-Carlton two years ago. Now the luxury hotel chain is one of her clients. As head of her own firm, she expects to far exceed her corporate salary. "I could never have done this without that Middle East experience," she says.

GROWING OPPORTUNITIES
Catalyst's study paints a picture of burgeoning demand for people who are willing to travel overseas: 80 percent of human resource managers said developing overseas staff was important, while 57 percent of those managers believed their business growth was constrained by a shortage of global managers. Yet the overwhelmingly male face of most expatriates shows that "U.S. companies are overlooking a huge portion of that talent pool," Sabin says.

Now the good news: Companies withglobal goals are resorting to creative strategies to increase the number of women who take international assignments. IBM and GE use their internal women's networks, and Deloitte Touche publishes an annual brochure to highlight women's international experience.

Where are companies looking to expand? The top-three primary emerging destinations for international jobs are China, the United Kingdom and Japan, according to the Global Relocation Trends Survey.

But it isn't always easy to recruit women. Debbie Soon, vice president of executive leadership for Catalyst, the nonprofit businesswomen's research group, says even top companies looking for overseas managers often have a difficult time selling the opportunity to potential employees. "We've spoken with many women who've had to turn down the opportunity," Soon says. She cites numerous Life/Work balance issues that impact such decisions. "Obstacles precluding this include having children in junior high school or a husband whose career is equally important to the family." Soon says for many women (and men too), it's a difficult decision requiring compromise. "Some do a commuter-style relationship or move the family. It's not an easy choice."

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