Impact of women empowerment on work performance: Malaysian banks

Abstract

This study aims to identify the impact of women’s empowerment on work performance in Malaysian banks, while describing the creativity and competency of their work performance. This paper therefore focuses on the empowerment of female bank managers at headquarters and branches. Women’s empowerment and work performance are two of the most important issues of concern and interest to Malaysian banking researchers. The contributions of female leaders are equally important as those of men in Malaysian banking industries. For example, the governor of Bank Negara Malaysia (Malaysia’s central bank) is a woman (Tan Sri Dato’ Sri Dr. Zeti Akhtar Aziz). She has been governor since the May of 2000, and she is the first woman to serve as governor of Malaysia’s central bank. The empowerment process of subordinate workers will help increase their autonomy, personal control, accountability, and self-esteem. Employees will feel happier as the sense of “ownership” of their work increases. Most female bank branch managers are be continuously under stress, and they work hard to achieve their targeted profit. They spend a great deal of time to complete their tasks at the workplace and, because of this, may develop stress, burnout, and even psychology disorders. In turn, these effects will impact work performance among female bank managers, who are departmental leaders of at headquarters and branches. Researchers talk about empowerment and work performance these days, and many female bank managers are trying to put it into practice. However, they do not really understand what empowerment involves or its impact on their work performance. As a result, problems and confusion may arise for decision-making authorities. This is a conceptual paper to study the impact of women’s empowerment on work performance. The study reviews literature to analyse factors that play a role on perceptions. It then discusses empowerment and work performance in terms of common misunderstandings.