A chart illustrating the differences in earnings between men and women of the same educational level (USA 2006)
A glass ceiling is a metaphor used to represent an invisible
barrier that keeps a given demographic (typically applied to minorities)
from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy.
The metaphor was first coined by feminists in reference to barriers in the careers of high-achieving women. In the US, the concept is sometimes extended to refer to obstacles hindering the advancement of minority women, as well as minority men. Minority women often find the most difficulty in "breaking the glass ceiling" because they lie at the intersection of two historically marginalized groups: women and people of color. East Asian and East Asian American news outlets have coined the term "bamboo ceiling" to refer to the obstacles that all East Asian Americans face in advancing their careers. Similarly, a set of invisible obstacles posed against refugees' efforts to workforce integration is coined "canvas ceiling".
Within the same concepts of the other terms surrounding the
workplace, there are similar terms for restrictions and barriers
concerning women and their roles within organizations and how they
coincide with their maternal duties. These "Invisible Barriers" function
as metaphors to describe the extra circumstances that women undergo,
usually when trying to advance within areas of their careers and often
while trying to advance within their lives outside their work spaces.
"A glass ceiling" represents a barrier that prohibits women from advancing toward the top of a hierarchical corporation.
Women in the workforce are faced with "the glass ceiling." Those
women are prevented from receiving promotion, especially to the
executive rankings, within their corporation. Within the last twenty
years, the women who are becoming more involved and pertinent in
industries and organizations have rarely been in the executive ranks.
Women in most corporations encompass below five percent of board of
directors and corporate officer positions.
Definition
The
United States Federal Glass Ceiling Commission defines the glass
ceiling as "the unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps minorities
and women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder,
regardless of their qualifications or achievements."
David Cotter and colleagues defined four distinctive characteristics that must be met to conclude that a glass ceiling exists. A glass ceiling inequality represents:
- "A gender or racial difference that is not explained by other job-relevant characteristics of the employee."
- "A gender or racial difference that is greater at higher levels of an outcome than at lower levels of an outcome."
- "A gender or racial inequality in the chances of advancement into higher levels, not merely the proportions of each gender or race currently at those higher levels."
- "A gender or racial inequality that increases over the course of a career."
Cotter and his colleagues found that glass ceilings are correlated
strongly with gender. Both white and minority women face a glass ceiling
in the course of their careers. In contrast, the researchers did not
find evidence of a glass ceiling for African-American men.
The glass ceiling metaphor has often been used to describe
invisible barriers ("glass") through which women can see elite positions
but cannot reach them ("ceiling").
These barriers prevent large numbers of women and ethnic minorities
from obtaining and securing the most powerful, prestigious and
highest-grossing jobs in the workforce.
Moreover, this effect prevents women from filling high-ranking
positions and puts them at a disadvantage as potential candidates for
advancement.
History
In 1839, French feminist and author George Sand used a similar phrase, une voûte de cristal impénétrable, in a passage of Gabriel, a never-performed play: "I was a woman; for suddenly my wings collapsed, ether closed in around my head like an impenetrable crystal vault,
and I fell...." [emphasis added]. The statement, a description of the
heroine's dream of soaring with wings, has been interpreted as a
feminine Icarus tale of a woman who attempts to ascend above her accepted role.
The first person said to use the term Glass ceiling was Marilyn Loden during a 1978 speech.
At the same time, according to the April 3, 2015, Wall Street Journal,
completely independent of Loden, the term glass ceiling was coined in
the spring of 1978 by Marianne Schriber and Katherine Lawrence at
Hewlett-Packard.
The ceiling was defined as discriminatory promotion patterns where the
written promotional policy is non-discriminatory, but in practice denies
promotion to qualified females. Lawrence presented this at the annual
Conference of the Women's Institute for Freedom of the Press at meeting
the National Press.
The term was later used in March 1984 by Gay Bryant. She was the former editor of Working Woman magazine and was changing jobs to be the editor of Family Circle. In an Adweek
article written by Nora Frenkel, Bryant was reported as saying, "Women
have reached a certain point—I call it the glass ceiling. They're in the
top of middle management and they're stopping and getting stuck. There
isn't enough room for all those women at the top. Some are going into
business for themselves. Others are going out and raising families." Also in 1984, Bryant used the term in a chapter of the book The Working Woman Report: Succeeding in Business in the 1980s. In the same book, Basia Hellwig used the term in another chapter.
In a widely cited article in the Wall Street Journal
in March 1986 the term was used in the
article's title: "The Glass Ceiling: Why Women Can't Seem to Break The
Invisible Barrier That Blocks Them From the Top Jobs". The article was
written by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy D. Schellhardt. Hymowitz and
Schellhardt introduced glass ceiling was "not something that could be
found in any corporate manual or even discussed at a business meeting;
it was originally introduced as an invisible, covert, and unspoken
phenomenon that existed to keep executive level leadership positions in
the hands of Caucasian males."
As the term "Glass Ceiling" got more issued within society,
public responded with differing ideas and opinions. Some argued that
glass ceiling is a myth rather than a reality because women chose to
stay home and showed less dedication to advance into executive suite. As a result of continuing public debate, the US Labor Department's chief, Lynn Morley Martin,
reported the results of a research project called "The Glass Ceiling
Initiative" formed to investigate the low numbers of women and
minorities in executive positions. This report defined the new term as
"those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias
that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their
organization into management-level positions."
In 1991, as a part of Title II of the Civil Right Act of 1991, Congress created the Glass Ceiling Commission. This 21 member Presidential Commission was chaired by Secretary of Labor Robert Reich,
and was created to study the "barriers to the advancement of minorities
and women within corporate hierarchies (the problem known as the glass
ceiling), to issue a report on its findings and conclusions, and to make
recommendations on ways to dis- mantle the glass ceiling."
The commission conducted extensive research including, surveys, public
hearings and interviews, and released their findings in a report in
1995.
The report, "Good for Business", offered "tangible guidelines and
solutions on how these barriers can be overcome and eliminated".
The goal of the commission was to provide recommendations on how to
shatter the glass ceiling, specifically in the world of business. The
report issued 12 recommendations on how to improve the workplace by
increasing diversity in the organization and reducing discrimination
through policy.
Number of women CEOs from the Fortune Lists has been increasing from 2012–2014,
but ironically women's labor force participation rate decreased from
52.4% to 49.6% between 1995 and 2015 globally. However, it is evident
that some countries like Australia has increased the labor force
participation of women over 27% since 1978. Furthermore, only 19.2% of S&P 500 Board Seats were held by women in 2014, of whom 80.2% were considered white.
Gender pay gap
The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings. In 2008 the OECD
suggested that the median earnings of female full-time workers were 17%
lower than the earnings of their male counterparts and that "30% of the
variation in gender wage gaps across OECD countries can be explained by
discriminatory practices in the labour market." The European Commission suggested that women's hourly earnings were 17.5% lower on average in the 27 EU Member States in 2008.
A paper by political activist website "nationalpartnership.org"
suggests that as of April 2017, women in the United States were on
average paid "80 cents for every dollar paid to men, amounting to an
annual gender wage gap of $10,470".
It may help from a research perspective to note that there are many
disagreeing viewpoints on this issue, and the research cited here is
presented in favor of the side that asserts society's view on minorities
is the cause of the pay gap. Moreover, "based on the human capital
theory, not only the general gender-specific pay differentials, but
also the different proportions of women and men in certain occupations
and fields of work
and thus the gender-specific labor market segregation is explained with
the so-called self selection".
In economics, there are various essential theories that describe the
illegitimate part of the gender pay gap. Gary S. Becker's theory of
"tastes of discrimination" indicates that there are some personal
prejudices which concern cooperation with a certain group of people.
Glass escalator
In addition to the glass ceiling, which already is stopping women
from climbing higher in success in the workplace, a parallel phenomenon
called the "glass escalator"
can be seen to occur. As more men join fields that were previously
dominated by women, such as nursing and teaching, men are promoted and
given more opportunities compared to women, as if men were taking
escalators and women were taking the stairs.
The chart from Carolyn K. Broner shows an example of the glass
escalator in favor of men for female-dominant occupations in schools.
While women have historically dominated the teaching profession, men
tend to take higher positions in school systems such as deans or
principals.
Men benefit financially from their gender status in historically
female field, often "reaping the benefits of their token status to reach
higher levels in female-dominated work."
A 2008 study published in Social Problems
found that sex segregation in nursing did not follow the "glass
escalator" pattern of disproportional vertical distribution; rather, men
and women gravitated towards different areas within the field, with
male nurses tending to specialize in areas of work perceived as
"masculine".
The article noted that "men encounter powerful social pressures that
direct them away from entering female-dominated occupations (Jacobs
1989, 1993)". Since female-dominated occupations are usually
characterized with more feminine activities, men who enter these jobs
can be perceived socially as "effeminate, homosexual, or sexual
predators".
Sticky floor
In
the literature on gender discrimination, the concept of "sticky floors"
complements the concept of a glass ceiling. Sticky floors can be
described as the pattern that women are, compared to men, less likely to
start to climb the job ladder. Thereby, this phenomenon is related to
gender differentials at the bottom of the wage distribution. Building on
the seminal study by Booth and co-authors in European Economic Review,
during the last decade economists have attempted to identify sticky
floors in the labour market. They found empirical evidence for the
existence of sticky floors in countries such as Australia, Belgium,
Italy, Thailand and the United States.
The frozen middle
Similar
to the sticky floor, the frozen middle describes the phenomenon of
women's progress up the corporate ladder slowing, if not halting, in the
ranks of middle management.
Originally the term referred to the resistance corporate upper
management faced from middle management when issuing directives. Due to a
lack of ability or lack of drive in the ranks of middle management
these directives do not come into fruition and as a result the company's
bottom line suffers.The term was popularized by a Harvard Business Review article titled "Middle Management Excellence".
Due to the growing proportion of women to men in the workforce,
however, the term "frozen middle" has become more commonly ascribed to
the aforementioned slowing of the careers of women in middle management.
The 1996 study "A Study of the Career Development and Aspirations of
Women in Middle Management" posits that social structures and networks
within businesses that favor "good old boys" and norms of masculinity
exist based on the experiences of women surveyed.
According to the study, women who did not exhibit stereotypical
masculine traits, (e.g. aggressiveness, thick skin, lack of emotional
expression) and interpersonal communication tendencies are at an
inherent disadvantage compared to their male peers. As the ratio of men to women increases in the upper levels of management,
women's access to female mentors who could advise them on ways to
navigate office politics is limited, further inhibiting upward mobility
within a corporation or firm.
Furthermore, the frozen middle affects female professionals in western
and eastern countries such as the United States and Malaysia,
respectively, as well as women in a variety of fields ranging from the aforementioned corporations to STEM fields.
Glass Ceiling Index
In 2017, the Economist
updated their glass-ceiling index. It combines data on higher
education, labour-force participation, pay, child-care costs, maternity
and paternity rights, business-school applications and representation in
senior jobs. The countries where inequality was the lowest were, in order of most equality, Iceland, Sweden, Norway, Finland, and Poland.
Gender stereotypes
Gallup Poll: Men are more Aggressive, Women are more Emotional
In a 1993 report released through the U.S. Army Research Institute
for the Behavioral and Social Sciences, researchers noted that women
have the same educational opportunities as their male counterparts, the
Glass Ceiling persist due to systematic barriers, low representation and
mobility, and stereotypes.
Feminine stereotypes attributed to women is one widely recognized
reason as to why female employees are systematically inhibited from
receiving advantageous opportunities in their career field. A majority of Americans perceive women to be more emotional and men to be more aggressive than their opposite sex.
Gender stereotypes influence how leaders are chosen by employers and
how workers of different sex are treated. Glass ceilings can be observed
in the typical American supermarket in which women are assigned to be
cashiers due to the belief that women are better than their male
co-workers at emotional management with customers. Journeyman clerks
whom are mostly assigned cashier shifts experience a low quality of work
and significantly less promotions.
A class action lawsuit was filed against Lucky Stores for the unjust
assignment of tasks to employees of different race and sex.
Moreover, one of the stereotypes towards women in workplaces is "gender
status belief" which claims that men are more competent and intelligent
than women, thus they have much higher positions in the career
hierarchy. Ultimately, this factor leads to perception of gender-based
jobs on the labor market, so men are expected to have more work-related
qualifications and hired for top positions.Glass Ceiling Effect and Earnings - The Gender Pay Gap in Managerial Positions in Germany. Perceived feminine stereotypes contribute to the glass ceiling faced by women in the workforce.
Types of women facing the glass ceiling in the workplace
"Intentional
Entrepreneurs" illustrate women who are involved in their workforce and
intentionally engage in the culture and operations of the particular
workplace in order to triumph to entrepreneurial levels. (Miree)
"Corporate Climbers" are the result of deliberately or
unintentionally being forced out of a corporation. They hit "the glass
ceiling" of their previous business; thus, those women start their own.
"The intentional entrepreneurs" and "the corporate climbers"
focus on the women who are competing for entrepreneurial positions
against the men. Men who uphold the desire and determination for
entrepreneurial positions are normally competing against other men,
while women feel inclined to find ethical and logical reasons to
enlighten corporate America or the particular workplace for why they are
equally as qualified. Women are forced out of Corporate America,
essentially reaching "the glass ceiling," women corporate climbers do
not have another alternative other than starting their own business.
Hiring practices
When
women leave their current business to start their own, they tend to
hire other women. Men tend to hire other men. These hiring practices
eliminate "the glass ceiling" because there is no more competition of
capabilities and discrimination of gender. These support the segregated
identification of "men’s work" and "women’s work."
Second shift
The
second shift focuses on the idea that women theoretically work a second
shift in the manner of having a greater workload, not just doing a
greater share of domestic work. All of the tasks that are engaged in
outside the workplace are mainly tied to motherhood. Depending on
location, household income, educational attainment, ethnicity and
location. Data shows that women do work a second shift in the sense of
having a greater workload, not just doing a greater share of domestic
work, but this is not apparent if simultaneous activity is overlooked. Alva Myrdal and Viola Klein
as early as 1956 focused on the potential of both men and women working
in settings that included paid and unpaid types of work environments.
Research indicated that men and women could have equal time for
activities outside the work environment for family and extra activities.
This "second shift" has also been found to have physical effects as
well, especially for women. Women whom engage in longer hours in pursuit
of family balance, often suffer more mental health issues such as
depression, anxiety, and other problems. Irritability, low motivation
and energy, and other emotional issues have been found as well. The
overall happiness of women can be improved if the balance of career and
home responsibilities are met.
Mommy Track
"Mommy
Track" refers to women who simply disregard their career and
professional duties in order to satisfy the needs of their families.
Women are often subject to long work hours that creates an imbalance
within the work-family schedule.
There is research suggesting that women were able to function on a
part-time professional schedule compared to others who worked full-time
while still engaged in external family activities. The research also
suggests flexible work arrangements allow for the achievement of a
healthy work and family balance. A difference has also been discovered
in the cost and amount of effort in childbearing amongst women in higher
skilled positions and roles, as opposed to women in lower-skilled jobs.
This difference leads to women delaying and postponing goals and career
aspirations over a number of years. A large number of women across the
country who have vocational/professional certifications and degrees have
been found to be not a part of the working force at the estimated rate
more than twice times as male counterparts. Also, the Deloitte Touche,
a professional hiring service firm, confirmed that they had recorded
dropout rates in each entering class of hires and reported that indeed
women's rates were very high compared to males due to mother- and
family-related responsibilities.
Concrete floor
The term concrete floor
has been used to refer to the minimum number or the proportion of women
necessary for a cabinet or board of directors to be perceived as
legitimate.
Cross-cultural context
Few
women tend to reach positions in upper echelon and organizations are
largely still almost exclusively lead by men. Studies have shown that
the glass ceiling still exists in varying levels in different nations
and regions across the world.
The stereotypes of women as emotional and sensitive could be seen as
key characteristics as to why women struggle to break the glass ceiling.
It is clear that even though societies differ from one another by
culture, beliefs and norms, they hold similar expectations of women and
their role in the society. These female stereotypes are often reinforced
in societies that have traditional expectations of women.
The stereotypes and perceptions of women are changing slowly across the
world, which also reduces gender segregation in organizations.
