Sun, 14 March 2010
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The challenge of being an expatriate and working mother became real to Philippa Reid in a supermarket in Hungary. The British executive had packed up her actor husband and three children in 1994 so they could join her on a three-year stint building Accenture's then-fledgling Central European consulting practice.
In a country where people still shop on a day-to-day basis, supermarkets don't bother to offer shopping carts. So, buying her usual week's worth of groceries, Reid wound up toting nine hand baskets to the cash register. "I thought the check-out clerk was going to have heart failure," she recalls.
But the big surprise still lay ahead. Unable to find Weetabix, her children's favourite breakfast food, she bought a box of muesli — usually a reliable fallback — only to discover back at home that the cereal was chock-full of Hungary's famous hot peppers.
Luckily, work went far more smoothly at Accenture. "There were familiar standards and ways of doing things," Reid recalls. The family settled in well enough for her to extend her tour to seven years and build the region's communications and high-tech practice from a crew of six to a staff of 265. And she became the first managing director for a country within Accenture.
More support needed
Women have long been overlooked for foreign assignments despite their growing ranks in middle and upper management, but lately the number of female expatriates has been on the rise.
In 2001, 16 percent of the US's expats were women, according to an annual survey co-sponsored by GMAC Global Relocation Services in New Jersey. Not a large number, but it grew by three percentage points between 1993 and 2000, and that much again over the next year alone.
Reid's experience in Hungary, surprisingly smooth at work and bumpier on the "life" side of the equation, is often the case for women executives who head overseas with a family.
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