History

Types of Glass Ceiling Barriers

• Paying differently for comparable work. Explanations offered to explain this gender gap center around education. Women were believed to have such low earning power when compared to males two decades ago because, women were just entering the paid labor force and therefore, they possessed less skill and education than most men. In turn the reason why this gap has greatly narrowed is due to the increase in education amongst women. McDonald and Thornton (2007) argue that when many factors such as promotions, job changes, and experience are controlled for much of the relationship between the wage gap, gender and educational attainment can be attributed to the types of majors men and women choose to pursue. This suggests that women just naturally gravitate to a field that earns less than male dominated fields. However, within female dominated fields (for example, education) the “glass ceiling” is still present. Women often have great difficulty acquiring managerial positions within the school system, which is overwhelmingly female oriented.. Therefore, this phenomenon extends beyond choice of major and into all fields.
     Although it's often down-played that any differences exist between men and women who are “climbing the ladder” together this is untrue. Unfortunately, the gendered inequalities are often embedded within the social hierarchy and this affects who is seen as the best fit for leadership roles. Different traits are assigned to females when compared to males. Males are seen as more competent and trustworthy as opposed to females. If a female does have other traits aside from the gendered traits that she's believed to possess then she's viewed negatively. For example, in a study conducted by Thomas-Hunt and Phillips (2004) they found that when women possessed expertise they were actually viewed as less influential by others. However, expertise was positive for males. Also, female led groups were less productive than male led groups even though the women held expertise in the area just like males. Therefore, possessing expertise isn't viewed as positively as it's for males. This also suggests that lack of skills isn't the only reason why women are not deemed worthy of leadership roles. Overall, the system is designed to cap the amount of promotions and knowledge women gain in comparison to males. In accordance with this notion of limited promotions Lyness and Heilman (2006) found that in a study conducted with 448 upper-level employees that women were less likely to be promoted than males, and if they were promoted they'd stronger performance ratings than males. However, performance ratings were more strongly connected to promotions for women than men. This suggests that woman had to be highly impressive to be considered eligible for leadership roles, whereas this wasn't the case for men.

  Reverse Glass Ceiling

  A new phenomenon, known as the "reverse glass ceiling", has been taking shape in America over the past few years. More and more men have started their careers in female-dominated industries, such as nursing, paralegal, travel and childcare. Many have been discriminated against because of this. Experts question whether it actually exists because it's still infantile in growth.
     Others call this concept the "glass escalator" and describe it as the rapid advancement of men into positions of authority within female-dominated occupations. nkppp

  Variations and related terms

• Bamboo Ceiling - The exclusion of Asian-Americans from executive and managerial roles on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of leadership potential" or "inferior communication ability" where the East Asian-American candidate has superior objective credentials such as Ivy League credentials (in comparison to their white counterparts with only state university credentials).
• Glass elevator (or glass escalator) - The rapid promotion of men over women, especially into management, in female-dominated fields such as nursing.
• Glass cliff - A situation wherein someone has been promoted into a risky, difficult job where the chances of failure are higher.
• Celluloid ceiling, referring to the small number of women in top positions in Hollywood, as documented by Lauzen (2002) and others.
• Sticky Floor - refers to women who are trapped in low-wage, low mobility jobs in state and local government.
• Sticky Ladder - A term used to describe women's struggle to reach the top of the corporate ladder. This term describes the theory that women are not incapable of reaching the top; they just get "stuck" on the middle rungs of the ladder.

"Glass Ceiling" in popular culture

Further Information

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