Search results

The purpose of this paper is to decipher the benefits of breaking the glass ceiling in the organization, providing strategies to overcome it, and discussing the benefits availed by the organization in bringing more participation from women in middle and senior level management.

This paper critically analyses the literature on women’s contribution to the organization’s success, their barriers to their advancement to corporate hierarchy, and breaking the glass ceiling, supported by appropriate theories.

Gender diversity initiatives are perquisite for an organization ' s success and performance because presence of more women in the organization increases firm’s productivity. It is because more participation of female employees offers organizations a wide range of resources, ideas, skills, and energy to the business, providing a competitive edge against the competitors.

With understanding the benefits of gender diversity initiatives, an organization will emphasize more on the development of female employees personally and professionally. This, in turn, will help organizations in terms of productivity.

Originality and value with understanding the benefits of gender diversity initiatives in an organization can focus more on growth and development aspects of female employees by breaking the glass ceiling and recognizing their competencies, qualifications, and achievement. This will lead to more participation of women in every echelon of management, resulting in firm performance.

The purpose of this study was to explore negative and stereotype-threatening depictions of career women in Hollywood films. The study draws on stereotype threat research to reflect on how such portrayals might undermine women’s career aspirations and contribute to the glass ceiling’s persistence, and proposes an agenda for future research.

Bridging social role theories with conceptual models of films as social “texts”, the author explored depictions of 165 career women presented by 137 films, focusing on negative and potentially stereotype-threatening personal and professional characteristics and contexts.

Thematic analyses of film portrayals revealed negative and stereotype-threatening characteristics and contexts of career women, including their mean and conniving personalities, promiscuity, isolation, failures at intimacy and inability to balance work and family.

Limitations include the subjective interpretations of a single author, a broad exploratory focus and no empirical evidence of connections between film portrayals and career attitudes. Researchers are encouraged to deepen analyses of film portrayals and examine linkages with stereotype threat and career behaviours sustaining the glass ceiling.

Given the pervasive reach of the media and the potential for consumers to internalize its messages, the negative depictions documented here could bear an adverse effect on women’s career aspirations, contributing to the glass ceiling’s survival.

Questioning the role of the media, in particular the portrayals of career women in film, provides an additional angle to understand why the glass ceiling endures.

The particular focus of this paper is female expatriates in Europe, which is a relatively under‐researched area. A total of 50 senior female expatriate managers were interviewed, representing a wide range of industry and service sectors. The aims of the paper are to highlight a number of critical factors which are necessary for successful female expatriate assignments. The results of the study show that female expatriates are disadvantaged in their careers because of the lack of organizational support which is readily available to their male counterparts. This lack of organizational support, together with the invisible barriers which constitute the glass ceiling, explain the relative scarcity of female expatriate managers.

This article presents evidence on the career success of young women managers and suggests an interaction between age and seniority as young women managers outpace their male counterparts in career progression. Hence the glass ceiling may be seen as “time bounded”. Three alternative explanations are presented: a sea change in women’s careers; that young women’s careers are fundamentally different from older women’s; that the glass ceiling moved up the hierarchy and affects only senior positions.

For the past several decades women have been moving into the United States workforce in greater numbers and they have been gaining access to the types of jobs that were, traditionally, performed exclusively by men. Despite this progress, they are still having difficulty penetrating the so‐called “glass ceiling” into upper management positions (Alimo‐Metcalfe 1993; Tavakolian 1993). Many reasons have been advanced, but the most compelling of these concerns the “glass walls” that support the “glass ceiling”. The “glass walls” refer to those invisible barriers that limit the ability of women and minorities to gain access to the type of job that would place them in a position to break through the “glass ceiling” (Townsend 1996). If women are to gain parity with men in the workforce, they need to succeed in the positions that lie inside the “glass walls” that will enable them to rise through the “glass ceiling” to upper management.

The purpose of this conceptual paper is to provide a theoretical explanation for the persistence of the glass ceiling keeping women from assuming leadership positions.

The methodological approach of this paper is to compare and contrast social role theory and expectation states theory as theoretical underpinnings to explain the persistence of a glass ceiling for women leaders.

Both social role theory and expectation states theory belong to the structural/cultural models describing differences between the genders. Social role theory and expectation states theory explicate diverse reasons for the emergence of these differences. However, both theories propose that gender differences will result in evaluation bias against women.

As a result of evaluation bias against women, the glass ceiling phenomenon keeping women from assuming top leadership positions continues to occur.

This paper is being written on the 20 year anniversary of the term glass ceiling being coined. It adds to the body of literature by closely examining two structural/cultural theories as possible causes to an invisible barrier which keeps women leaders from entering top level management positions.

This paper aims to draw on Ashcraft’s (2013) metaphor of the “glass slipper” (which highlights the need for alignment between occupational identity and embodied social identities of workers) to show how merit may not adhere to individuals when social identity in the form of gender, race or class fails to fit the definition and perceived characteristics of the job.

This is a conceptual paper.

This study develops the notion of the Teflon effect to describe the way merit may go unrecognised and may therefore not “stick” to the bodies of women in management and leadership roles.

This study provides an explanation for the persistence of the glass ceiling and the barriers women face as they undertake or aspire to management and/or leadership positions in organisations.

This study introduces a more embodied notion of merit which relies on both performance and recognition to “take effect”. Professionals must see beyond “objective” measures of merit in performance reviews and/or in recruitment and promotion decisions to include reflection on the significance of merit’s subjective, “performed” dimensions.

This study adds to understandings of women’s positioning in organisations.

This study develops the notion of the Teflon effect. This highlights the significance of the recognition, performance and embodiment of merit and how merit may fail to adhere to the bodies of women in management and leadership roles.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the most common general metaphors for women’s leadership: the glass ceiling, sticky floor and the labyrinth. The authors discuss the strengths and weaknesses of these metaphors for characterizing women’s current situation as leaders.

In addition to reviewing the literature on the status of women leaders, the authors also discuss recent research on the power of metaphor to illustrate concepts and influence social judgments.

The authors conclude that the labyrinth is the most useful metaphor for women leaders, because although there has been slow steady improvement in women’s access to leadership, women continue to face challenges that men do not face: gender stereotypes that depict women as unsuited to leadership, discrimination in pay and promotion, lack of access to powerful mentors and networks and greater responsibility for childcare and other domestic responsibilities.

Although the glass ceiling metaphor implies that women face obstacles once they have risen to very high levels of leadership and the sticky floor metaphor implies that women are prevented from any advancement beyond entry level, the labyrinth reflects the myriad obstacles that women face throughout their careers.

The labyrinth metaphor not only acknowledges these challenges but also suggests that women can advance to very high levels of leadership.

Despite long‐standing legislation within the UK, women are still generally under‐represented at managerial level within organisations. One method of making a difference to this situation is the provision of positive action training and this paper summarises the arguments for and against positive action. Also describes a case study of a positive action training initiative for women managers in local government and assesses its potential effectiveness as a means of breaking through the “glass ceiling”. It explains how the training programme is structured and delivered and draws on relevant aspects of the findings of a research study undertaken to explore the opinions of the women students. Particular attention is given to their experience of the glass ceiling, opinions on perceived barriers to progression and on whether or not the programme has acted as a change agent. Some considerations for good practice are offered in conclusion.

Women as individuals experience subtle discrimination regarding career development opportunities as evidenced by research on the Glass Ceiling. This paper looks at the ramifications of technology, specifically the Internet, and how it affects women’s career opportunities.