Glass ceiling hypothesis is useful for describing the invisible barriers that block the promotion of women, and keeps her from rising beyond a certain level in a hierarchy. Glass Ceiling refers to barriers that are not explicit, but are inherent in the social organization and social relationships of the workplace. 'Glass Ceiling Hypothesis' is also about class oppression. There is enough evidence in favor of a glass ceiling both in Germany and the United States. The glass ceiling hypothesis is a general hypothesis about the patterns of gender discrimination in organizational hierarchies. Glass ceiling in glass ceiling hypothesis highlights the belief that the playing field is level for women and men in the labor market, though in reality it is not so.
Because of the glass ceiling, women may find their corporate careers obstructed as they are excluded from the social associations created by male fellow workers. panerai replica watches Some of the apparent gender gap in authority would be the result of the distribution of women into work settings with fewer managerial opportunities rather than any gender-specific obstacles.
The glass ceiling effect at the middle level of managerial hierarchies could be higher than at higher levels. Removing glass ceiling obstacles to getting into middle hierarchy would appear to be a more pressing task than removing obstacles to promotions in the upper reaches of authority structures.
In Germany the glass ceiling is evident in higher incomes while in the United States the glass ceiling is evident at all incomes levels. The glass ceiling hypothesis and concept is sometimes extended to refer to obstacles hindering the advancement of minority women, as well as minority men. Gender Roles are social roles ascribed to individuals on the basis of their sex. The salience of the 'glass ceiling' metaphor in public discussions of gender inequality, has given rise to a substantial body of quantitative research systematically exploring the extent and variations in the glass ceiling.
Glass Ceiling discrimination in promotions is not generally present across all levels of hierarchy but is more intense at higher levels. It has been established with empirical evidence that the relative rates of women being promoted to higher levels compared to men declines with the level of the hierarchy. Occupational and organizational sex segregation, even self-segregation, may reflect various forms of gender discrimination in the society at large, but the mechanisms involved are different from those identified in the glass ceiling hypothesis.
Much less political energy has been devoted to ending gendered discrimination in employment practices, which may help explain both a larger overall gender gap in authority and the presence of glass ceiling effects within hierarchies.
People may voluntarily exit organizations and leave the hierarchy before reaching the highest level they could have attained if they had stayed in their jobs. If women voluntarily leave in this way at higher rates than men, then the distribution of men and women across levels may simulate a glass ceiling where none exists.
Distributional patterns that may look like a glass ceiling could simply be by-products of past discrimination and past lower levels of women’s labor force participation rather than current practices. Quality differences could work either to make it seem that a glass ceiling is present when one does not really exist or to mask the presence of a glass ceiling.
As a metaphor, the glass ceiling conveys a strong connotation when the glass ceiling is actually measured by the mobility of individuals between different hierarchical levels, one recognizes that it has different levels of severity, or closedness, and thus the analyst can investigate the phenomenon as a matter of degree rather than as a dichotomy. - Yamagata.
Madam CJ Walker was an
entrepreneur who, in the early 1900s, became the first woman to be a self-made
millionaire in the US. Not only that, she somehow managed to do this as a black
woman at a time when being black hurt your social status. Born to a pair of
former slaves. She was born free but was orphaned by age seven, married by 14
and widowed by 20. Walker wouldn't let any of that keep her from success. She
started a business selling cosmetics for African-American women, and her success
led to her millionaire status.
Kathryn Bigelow became the
first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for her outstanding 2008
film about the Iraq War, "The Hurt Locker." The film also took home the award
for Best Picture, in addition to four other Oscars.
First Female Fortune 500 CEO
and the first woman to break the glass ceiling in the corporate world, Katharine
Graham took the reins of the Washington Post Co. in 1963, following the suicide
of her husband Philip. The publication of the Pentagon Papers in 1971 and the
uncovering of the Watergate scandal led to President Richard Nixon's resignation
in 1974. In 1999, Carly Fiorina became the CEO of Hewlett-Packard, the first
woman to do so at a Fortune 100 company.
On April 17, 1964, Geraldine
Mock completed her solo flight around the world, becoming the first woman to
break the glass ceiling. After 29 days, 11 hours, 59 minutes and 23,103 miles,
the "flying housewife" landed in Port Columbus Airport in Ohio.
Muriel Siebert was the First
Female Member of the New York Stock Exchange. She became the first woman to buy
a seat on the New York Stock Exchange in 1967, as well as the first to run an
NYSE member firm, Muriel Siebert & Co.
Victoria Woodhull became the
first woman to run for president in 1872, long before women could even vote. Not
only did she run, she actually received the Equal Rights Party's nomination on a
platform of equal rights for women as well as women's suffrage. Victoria
Woodhull and Tennessee Claflin were First Female Stockbrokers.
A little over 40 years ago on
May 16, 1975, a then 35-year-old Japanese woman named Junko Tabei reached the
peak of Mount Everest with assistance from a Sherpa guide, Ang Tshering. On May
13, 1995, British mountaineer Alison Hargreaves became the first woman to climb
Everest unaided. Incredibly, that meant no bottled oxygen and no help from
Sherpas.
Frances Perkins became the first woman to serve in a
US Cabinet. In her role, she helped push New Deal
programs like Social Security, the primary program to fund elderly and retired
people. She spent years working in public service before joining Franklin Delano
Roosevelt's cabinet from 1933-1945, which also made her the longest serving US
Secretary of Labor in US history.
Aloha Wanderwell spent years
driving a Ford Model T across 43 countries. She was dubbed by newspapers at the
time as the World's Most Widely Traveled Girl, Amelia Earhart of the Automobile, and
the first woman to Drive Around the World in an Automobile.
Nominated by President Ronald
Reagan in 1981, Sandra Day O'Connor became the first woman to sit on the US
Supreme Court. In 1950, she graduated from Stanford University, where would also
attend law school afterward. According to Biography.com, limited opportunities
for female lawyers at the time led O'Connor to take a job in order to break the
glass ceiling, working for the county attorney of California's San Mateo region.
On June 16, 1963, Soviet
cosmonaut Valentina Tereshkova became the first woman in space. She spent nearly
three days in orbit before returning to Earth a hero. For her accomplishment,
she received the Order of Lenin, Soviet Union's two highest possible decorations
and Hero of the Soviet Union awards, breaking the glass ceiling.
The first woman to be elected
to Congress, Jeannette Rankin, inspired by the woman's
suffrage movement, sought to help it from the inside. After years of trying
to amend state constitutions to permit women to vote, in 1916, Rankin decided to
run for one of Montana's seats in the US House of Representatives.
Charlotte Cooper attended the
1900 Summer Olympics in Paris, the first Olympics where women were allowed to
participate. In Paris, she won in tennis singles and mixed doubles, making her
the first individual woman Olympic champion.
Marie Curie won the Nobel
Prize in Physics in 1903 with her husband and colleague, Pierre Curie, for their
work with radioactivity, becoming the first woman Nobel laureate. Eight years
later, though her husband had died, Curie won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry for
her discovery and production of radium and polonium. When she won the second
prize, she became the first woman to win two prizes as well as the first woman
to win prizes in two different fields. She truely broke the glass ceiling.
The glass ceiling hypothesis: A Comparative
Study of the United States, Sweden, and Australia
Erik Olin Wright, Janeen Baxter. Abstract: The general-case glass ceiling hypothesis
states that not only is it more difficult for women than for men to be promoted
up levels of authority hierarchies within workplaces but also that the obstacles
women face relative to men become greater as they move up the hierarchy.
This article explores this glass ceiling hypothesis
with data from three countries: the United States, Australia, and Sweden. The
basic conclusion is that while there is strong evidence for a general gender gap
in authority, the odds of women having authority are less than those of men, there
is no evidence for systematic glass ceiling effects in the United States and
only weak evidence for such effects in the other two countries.
Theory and evidence on the glass ceiling effect
using matched worker-firm data
Abstract: We investigate the glass ceiling hypothesis according to which
there exists larger gender wage gaps at the upper tail of the wage distribution. Then, we focus on the relevance of
the glass ceiling hypothesis in France using a representative matched worker-firm data set in
1992 of about 130,000 employees and 14,000 employers.
Glass Walls and Glass Ceilings : Women's Representation in State and Municipal Bureaucracies - by Margaret F. Reid, Brinck Kerr, Will Miller. Reid, Kerr, and Miller seek to redress the lack of systematic, generalizable research on women's representation in state and municipal bureaucracies by focusing specifically on the representation of female managers in high-level policy and decision-making positions in their agencies or departments. Their primary interest is to determine if, first, agency missions are associated with glass walls and glass ceilings, and, second, whether, relative to white women, African American women and Latinas have made progress in laying claim to a greater share of managerial positions in public-sector agencies.
Negotiating the Glass Ceiling: Careers of Senior Women in the Academic World - by Miriam David, Diana Woodward (Editors). Why is it that in many universities the number of women professors few, while the number of men number in the hundreds? Why are women academics so relatively disadvantaged and men so firmly in control? In an attempt to find answers to these questions Negotiating the Glass Ceiling gathers together the unique personal reflections of 16 eminent women working in higher education across the world.
Dancing on the Glass Ceiling : Tap into Your True Strengths, Activate Your Vision, and Get What You Really Want out of Your Career - by Candy Deemer, Nancy Fredericks. Dancing on the Glass Ceiling gave me both life balance and work success. If you follow the 10 steps the authors give you--you can be a SVP at a worldwide company top in it's field and work only three days a week. I feel very lucky to jump from meetings with chairmans to the kids' car pool on a weekly basis. If you want to get what you want out of life hurry and get Dancing on the Glass Ceiling now! - Marianne Ellis, SVP DDB Worldwide.