Bamboo ceiling

The term "bamboo ceiling" is a concept that describes the barriers faced by many Asian Americans in the professional arena, such as stereotypes and racism, particularly with ascending to top executive and leadership positions. The term was coined and popularized in 2005 by Jane Hyun in Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling: Career Strategies for Asians, where she addresses those barriers while also providing solutions to overcome them. Hyun defines the bamboo ceiling a combination of individual, cultural, and organizational factors that impede Asian Americans' career progress inside organizations. The second in Hyun's "Bamboo Ceiling" book series is the 2024 title Leadership Toolkit for Asians: The Definitive Resource Guide for Breaking the Bamboo Ceiling which updates and expands on the content of the first book.
Since the publication of Hyun's book, a variety of sectors have discussed the impact of the ceiling as it relates to people of Asian descent and the challenges they face. As described by a senior writer at Fortune magazine, "bamboo ceiling" refers to the processes and barriers that serve to exclude Asians and Asian-Americans from executive positions on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of leadership potential" and "lack of communication skills" that cannot actually be explained by job performance or qualifications. Articles regarding the subject have been written in Crains, Fortune, The Atlantic and Forbes.
The term is a derivative of the glass ceiling, which refers to the more general metaphor used to describe invisible barriers through which people of marginalized genders, and/or Black, Indigenous, and racialized peoples can see managerial positions, but cannot reach them. Similar metaphor includes canvas ceiling posed on refugees and their workforce integration efforts.
Based on publicly available government statistics, Asian Americans have the lowest chance of rising to management when compared with African Americans, Hispanics, and women in spite of having the highest educational attainment.

In the United States

Underrepresentation of Asian Americans

The Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited discrimination on the basis of race. However, covert forms of racism persist in the workforce. The Census Bureau reports that Asian Americans have the highest education levels of any racial category in the United States. Of Asian Americans, 52.4% are college graduates, while the national average is 29.9%.

According to United States Census Bureau, in 2010 the Asian American population accounts for about 5.6% of the total population in the U.S. but only 0.3% of corporate office populations.
In New York City, Asian Americans have the highest number of associates at top New York law firms, yet the lowest conversion rate to partner.
Even in fields where Asian Americans are highly disproportionally represented, such as the Silicon Valley software industry, they comprise a disproportionately small percentage of upper management and board positions. Statistics show that despite 33% of all software engineers in the Silicon Valley being people of Asian descent, they make up only 6% of board members and 10% of corporate officers of the Bay Area's 25 largest companies.
At the National Institutes of Health, though 21.5% of scientists are Asian, they make up only 4.7% of the lab and branch directors.
According to a study of the 25 largest Bay Area companies 12 had no board members of Asian descent, and five had no corporate officers of Asian descent.
According to the United States Census 2010, Asian Americans make up 5.6% of the American population, as of 2014, 3% of the district court judges are Asian American. Between 2009 and 2010, President Obama had nominated eight Asian Americans to a seat on the U.S. District Court, four women and four men. Six of the nominations have been confirmed by the Senate except for the nominations of two of the men Edward M. Chen and Goodwin Liu; while all the women were confirmed.
In 2015, Ascend, an Asian-American professional organization from New York, conducted a study on the Asian-American workforce in several tech companies within Silicon Valley. They found that although there is representation in lower-level positions, where 27% of the professionals were Asian-American, there is an underrepresentation in many executive positions: fewer than 19% of managers and less than 14% of executives were of Asian descent.
In 2009 a study by the Australian National University showed significant racism in hiring practices. The study found that a Chinese-named applicant would need to put in 68 per cent more applications than a Western-named applicant to get the same number of calls back.
Asian American women and non-men are specifically underrepresented. Out of all Asian-American women working in tech, only 1 in 285 is an executive.
In a 2005-2006 study analyzing Asian Americans and Pacific Islander representation on television, multi-university researchers found that 1.8% of broadcast series regulars were Asian American, and there were no Pacific Islander series regulars on television. In a 10 year follow-up study conducted by the same researchers, they found that Asian Americans appeared in only 36% of shows across all streaming platforms. In comparison, 96% of shows aired during 2015-2016 had at least one White series regular.

The bamboo ceiling in the United States is a subtle and complex form of discrimination, and the umbrella term "Asian American" extends to include a number of diverse groups, including South Asians, East Asians, and Southeast Asians. These groups are often subject to "model minority" stereotypes, and viewed as quiet, hardworking, family-oriented, high achieving in math and science, passive, non-confrontational, submissive, and antisocial. In the workforce, some of these perceptions may seem positive in the short-term, but in the long-term they impede progression up the corporate and academic ladders.
While Asian Americans are often viewed as a "model minority" race, many feel that they are an invisible or "forgotten minority", despite being one of the fastest growing groups in the country. Because they are generally considered ineligible for many of the minority rights of underrepresented races, and Asian Americans have been shown to be less likely to report incidents of racial discrimination in the workplace, there are far fewer institutional avenues and programs for them to combat these labels and perceptions.

Causes and effects

Some analysts attribute the racial disparity in administrative capacities to negative extensions of the aforementioned stereotypes of Asian Americans, such as common assumptions that they are "lacking in leadership skills" or that they have "poor communication abilities". Asian Americans are also sometimes expected to have higher qualifications than their white counterparts, such as graduating from more prestigious universities, to achieve the same positions in American companies.
Recent work displays stereotypes about innovation contributing to the bamboo ceiling. A 2024 study shows that East Asian Americans are perceived to be less innovative. This trait is highly linked to many U.S. organizations, proving that this perception lowers the rate of leadership roles that Asian Americans can land.
Many of these stereotypes and expectations have a basis in cultural misunderstandings. Some Asian Americans claim that they are raised with culture-specific values that affect perceptions of their workplace behaviour. For example, some report being taught from an early age to be self-effacing, reticent, respectful, and deferential towards authority. These values do not translate well into the American workplace, where Asian Americans' respectfulness can be misinterpreted as aloofness, arrogance, and inattentiveness. As a result, Asian Americans are less likely to be seen as having qualities that appeal to American employers, such as leadership, charisma and risk-taking, and are often passed over for promotions in spite of satisfactory or high job performance. Asian Americans are also less likely to aggressively network, self-promote, and speak up at work meetings with concerns and ideas when compared to their coworkers, whilst Asian Americans who do are received negatively.
Another factor may be an existing lack of connections and Asian American role models in upper management and in politics. Until relatively recently with the Civil Rights Movement, a large number of individuals of Asian descent had few political and social rights, or were denied rights of citizenship by naturalisation. While many Asian Americans are active in political life and government positions today, their representation is still disproportionately small, and there remain unofficial barriers to political access.
A survey that was taken revealed that while 83% of Asian Americans felt loyal to their jobs, only 49% felt as though they belonged in the American workforce. According to researchers that study diversity and talent management, 25% of Asians surveyed said "they had felt workplace discrimination because of their ethnicity." Asian American men, more than any other demographic, said they felt stalled in their careers and were more likely to quit their current jobs to search for advancement elsewhere. In another survey, 66% of Asian American men and 44–50% of Asian American women said they felt their careers had stalled, showing that not only do Asian Americans face large amounts of workplace discrimination, but also that Asian American men are discriminated against more than Asian American women by a wide margin, revealing a significant gender disparity.
AAPI of marginalized genders face additional barriers as a result of being both Asian American and not a cis man. Articles estimate that, on average, Asian American women earned 27–40% less than Asian American men, the highest of any racial group.