Invisible Barriers

1629 Words4 Pages
bulb-icon

Recommended: literature review on women in leadership

The feminization of labor started during the earliest phases of industrialization. During this time period men and women were usually paid the same wages and worked side by side in the same factories. By the twentieth century men had taken over the workforce, absolutely dominating the technological areas where people are paid the most. Only one in five women was paid for her work, and these women were paid very little. By the 1970s more women were drawn to work because of higher pay, and by 1990 three out of five women were paid for their work. This percentage is rapidly increasing, perhaps because of several changes in society. The U.S. price of living has increased, and many women have become employed to help pay this rising price (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). Many more women are graduating from college and other professional schools (Kilbourne 1995), and these women seek out the large amounts of job opportunities with higher pay that require higher education (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). But still, even though opportunities are becoming more equal for men and women, there is still a huge gender gap in the workforce. Surveys of the top Fortune 1000 industrial and 500 service companies show that 95 percent of senior level managers are men, leaving a rare five percent of women to head very few companies (Redwood 1996). What is barring women from reaching the top of corporate ladders? The glass ceiling is a term coined for the invisible barrier to movement in the very top positions in business and government, making it difficult for women to reach the top of their profession (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). There are many reasons for the existence of this barrier, but two of the most prominent are social barriers (Redwood 1996), which often can cause women to feel uncomfortable or discouraged about moving up, and also women’s “second shift”, which is the “the unpaid housework that women typically do after they come home from paid employment” (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997).
One of the reasons women are not found in top business positions is because they do not see other women at the top. As Elizabeth Perle McKenna, a former publisher, says, “Women are bailing because they’re looking up and saying, ‘Hey, there’s nobody who looks like me up there. Am I going to knock myself out for the next twenty years only to be passed over f...

... middle of paper ...

...minor changes in their system could be for their overall productivity, the glass ceiling would be removed. As Elizabeth Perle McKenna says, all you have to do is “make the work fit into the [employees] lives so the company can continue to grow and be profitable and the employees can have working environments where they aren’t tearing themselves apart” (Jones 1997). Once this is accomplished, men and women will truly have equal opportunity to rise and fall on the corporate ladder.

Works Cited
Jones, Barbara. 1997. “Giving Women the Business”. Harpers, December, p. 47-58
Redwood, Rene. 1996. “The Glass Ceiling”. In Motion Magazine: Washington D.C. Retrieved
October 3, 2000
(http://www.trinity.edu/dspener/Soci_1301/Lecture_materials/glass_ceiling_commission.htm)
Naff, Katherine and Sue Thomas. 1994-1995. “The Glass Ceiling Revisited: Determinants of
Federal Job Advancement”. Policy Studies Review:249-272
Kilbourne, Barbara, George Farkas, Kurt Beron, Dorothea Weir, and Paula England. 1994.
“Returns to Skill, Compensating Differentials, and Gender Bias: Effects of Occupational Characteristics on the Wages of White Women and Men”. American Journal of Sociology:689-719

Show More
Related

  • The Enron Implosion and the Loss of Respect for the Accounting Profession

    5463 Words  | 11 Pages

    On the surface, the motives behind decisions and events leading to Enron’s downfall appear simple enough: individual and collective greed born in an atmosphere of market euphoria and corporate arrogance. Hardly anyone—the company, its employees, analysts or individual investors—wanted to believe the company was too good to be true. So, for a while, hardly anyone did. Many kept on buying the stock, the corporate mantra and the dream. In the meantime, the company made many high-risk deals, some of which were outside the company’s typical asset risk control process. Many went sour in the early months of 2001 as Enron’s stock price and debt rating imploded because of loss of investor and creditor trust. Methods the company used to disclose its complicated financial dealings were all wrong and downright deceptive. The company’s lack of accuracy in reporting its financial affairs, followed by financial restatements disclosing billions of dollars of omitted liabilities and losses, contributed to its downfall. The whole affair happened under the watchful eye of Arthur Andersen LLP, which kept a whole floor of auditors assigned at Enron year-round.

    Read More

  • Enron's Fall: An Examination of Corporate Ethics

    877 Words  | 2 Pages

    The Enron Corporation was committed to pushing the legal limit as far as possible. Many individuals only seeking to promote their own well-being over any legal or ethical boundaries did this. This was not only isolated with the Enron Corporation, as Arthur Andersen the outside accounting firm and Vinson & Elkins Enron’s law firm were also participants. The key players that led to the collapse of Enron was the founder Kenneth Lay, his successor

    Read More

  • The Enron Corporation Scandal

    1822 Words  | 4 Pages

    The American Dream typically involves working hard to build up an organization, maintaining it well, and reaping the benefits. This vision most certainly drove the formation of the energy powerhouse known as the Enron Corporation. The company began as two average sized organizations and within 15 years emerged as America’s seventh largest company. The organization employed close to 21,000 staff members with locations in over 40 nations around the world. Unfortunately, this success was decimated by numerous scandals involved with accounting practices. From lies of profits to questionable dealings, such as concealing debts, the parties involved with running the company had made some fatal errors. The end result left Enron without creditors and investors, leading to the firm to file for Chapter 11 bankruptcy (British Broadcasting Corporation, Enron Scandal at a Glance). The story of this once remarkable company is one that can be traced from the decisions made from its inception leading all the way to the much publicized trials that ensued.

    Read More

  • Enron Corporation: The Downfall Of Ethical Behavior In Business

    784 Words  | 2 Pages

    Ethics policies are implemented in almost all businesses. Companies search for candidates that will be moral in their actions so they can ensure long-term financial success. Throughout history we have seen businesses fall due to unethical behavior. In recent years the business Enron Corporation is best known for the scandal that led to the bankruptcy of a company with more than 60 billion dollars in assets. We will examine the circumstances that led to the downfall of Enron, how the scandal was realized, as well as the outcome of one of the largest bankruptcies in American history; a case that exemplifies unethical professional behavior.

    Read More

  • The Glass Ceiling: Are Women Treated Differently than Men?

    2902 Words  | 6 Pages

    “The history of the Glass Ceiling Commission dates back to 1986 when Wall Street Journal reported a pattern of highly accomplished women being passed over for upper-level promotions due to an invisible barrier”. The term “glass-ceiling” first entered America’s public conversation almost two decades ago, when the Corporate Woman column from The Wall Street Journal identified this new phenomenon. “There seem to be an invisible –but impenetrable- barrier between women and the executive suite, preventing them from reaching the highest levels of the business world regardless of th...

    Read More

  • Oranizational Ethics

    1378 Words  | 3 Pages

    The overall view clarification of the issue illustrates the evolution of Enron’s innovations and fraud. The business records of the company financial economists and accountant’s uncovered considerable number information and incentive issues. The issues both complicate and potentially resolve the appraised valuation questions such as; earnings growth, stock splits, dividend changes, free cash flow limitations, share price-based compensation and hedging of market risks. The Enron Company contributed large sums of money to non-profit organizations for the purpose of acting on probable ethical issues before they become legal dilemmas. The company failed to inform its consumers of the business decisions made even though they had knowledge that the person at the other end of the business deal did not. The Enron Company filed a Chapter 11 to seek bankruptcy protection. The uncertainty of the company’s standings impacted the market’s confidence in...

    Read More

  • My Journey to Literacy

    943 Words  | 2 Pages

    My first experience to literacy came as a young adult. I have always been reluctant with my education, because of the family problems I experienced growing up. The harsh treatment our family received growing up made it very difficult to study in school, my body was physically in class but my mind was not. The trials and tribulations I went through growing up as a kid continued throughout my teenage years. Dropping out of high school I believe brought upon literacy difficulty. At the age of twenty-three, I finally had enough of feeling undereducated. Living in my mother’s basement with no job and an 8th grade education, the walls started to close in on me as my frustration became greater by the minute.

    Read More

  • Gender Inequality: Equality And Equality

    1436 Words  | 3 Pages

    But, many studies have shown that women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men earn, resulting in the glass ceiling concept (Barreto, Ryan. Schmitt 2009). As introduced in the 1980s, the glass ceiling concept is a metaphoric phrase defined as an invisible barrier that many women tend to hit, resulting in a obstacle to a higher advancement within any profession, which many women have to face today. The goal of the Equal Pay Act of 1963 was to eliminate discrimination against any specific gender, including the gender pay gap. This was supposed to set an equal amount of pay for both genders but has yet still failed to do so. Many women tend to hit the glass ceiling due to a difference in pay, less experience, and a lack of value than most men have towards women in the workplace. Once women get to a certain point in their profession, it been acknowledged that many tend to feel the weight of being able to succeed and handle a position of leadership. Men are notably considered as “more competent and better leaders than women.” This especially is seen when women work in more male-dominated jobs, as they hit the glass ceiling sooner which prevents them from climbing the ladder into higher ranked jobs (Williams 2013). According to a study, women are beginning to gain higher positions in their profession, but they still only account for 15 percent of the higher corporate ladder within America. In Latin America, there has been significant progress, as the gender pay gap has been close. This is a goal we must work towards in America, if we want to equality for all within the workplace. We must implement stricter laws, such as creating a policy that provides that both men and women are paid equally for same

    Read More

  • The History Of Enron

    1023 Words  | 3 Pages

    Enron was the world 's biggest and richest company in the late nineteen-nineties. It 's net value reached 70 billion dollars over the course of a decade and crashed and burned in a single year of savage media coverage and brutal criminal investigations. It 's important to understand how individual arrogance, the corporate recklessness, and U.S. greed collaboratively cost the biggest economic scandal of its kind. Enron was founded in nineteen eighty-five by Kenneth Lay as a natural gas company in the Pacific Northwest. Around that time the energy markets of the US were being deregulated, that is transitioning from government control to free-market. Lay hired visionary Jeffrey Skilling. Under his leadership, the company moved to Houston, Texas

    Read More

  • Sexism and Stereotypes

    567 Words  | 2 Pages

    Sexism is a major factor in the workforce.Today male and female have a hard time breaking into the opposite gender dominated fields. This has happened because of the media, it has showed us that male have certain “right” jobs, as well as female. Female still dominate traditional female professions like cosmetology jobs are 92.9 percent women working them(Wolfe). If a man were to get into cosmetology they would most likely be judged for having that job, because we stereotype that they can't have a feminine job. Women have a harder time getting into high level positions. “Women make up only 21 of the S&P’s 500 CEOs,” (Berman). This has happened because the media has set in place stereotypes that it is wrong for women to have high level positions. It is getting better, in 2013 women chief financial officers increased 35 percent at large U.S. companies from 2012 (Frier and Hymowitz). The job market for men and women is still unfair but it is starting to get equal.

    Read More

  • Enron Ethical Dilemmas

    722 Words  | 2 Pages

    When an ethical dilemma arises within an organization, it is difficult to separate right and wrong with what is best for the majority. Sometimes the answer is not a simple “yes” or “no.” In 2002, Enron Corporation shows us just that. By 2002, the sixth-largest corporation in America filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The case of the Enron scandal is one of the best examples of corporate greed and fraud in America.

    Read More

  • Literacy And Literacy Essay

    966 Words  | 2 Pages

    I used to have to take these tests about all the books I would read in school and I would always ace them all. I knew that reading was something I liked because I was always very intrigued by it. Also in middle school I found my true writing voice. I remember taking a creative writing class in six grade and I was always the student who wrote more than what was expected for my writing assignments. I would write stories about things such as my friends and the experiences that I had in school. Sometimes I would even write my own plays and in my plays the characters would be people in family and people from school. I would always try to make the plot super interesting in my plays. One time I wrote a play about my brothers and me traveling to space and finding aliens. Overall, I really fell in love with literacy throughout my middle school years because I was able to read books more at an advance level and I also was able to write more intense stories. Literacy has been a positive influence in my life all throughout my school

    Read More

  • Argumentative Essay On Women's Pay

    832 Words  | 2 Pages

    As a result, the only logical solution to the problem would be to give women equal pay as men. This clearly would mean that women are being given higher up positions in the corporate setting. It is troubling to think that this issue has continued to go unsolved in the twenty-first century. What is even more alarming, is that there would be no negative repercussions to ending the wage gap. The wage gap is completely unfair and has clearly given working women a disadvantage in the workplace. This solution would help working women in society because they would finally feel equal to men in the workplace. If we keep allowing this to happen, it will only hinder the progress of other women’s and other progressive issues. It is time to end the stigma on working women in our society by ending the women’s wage gap once and for

    Read More

  • The Enron Corporation Case Study

    1339 Words  | 3 Pages

    The Enron Corporation was an American energy company that provided natural gas, electricity, and communications to its customers both wholesale and retail globally and in the northwestern United States (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Top executives, prestigious law firms, trusted accounting firms, the largest banks in the finance industry, the board of directors, and other high powered people, all played a part in the biggest most popular scandal that shook the faith of the American people in big business and the stock market with the demise of one of the top Fortune 500 companies that made billions of dollars through illegal and unethical gains (Ferrell, et al, 2013). Many shareholders, employees, and investors lost their entire life savings, investments,

    Read More

  • What Are The Ethical Issues In Enron

    874 Words  | 2 Pages

    Enron was on the of the most successful and innovative companies throughout the 1990s. In October of 2001, Enron admitted that its income had been vastly overstated; and its equity value was actually a couple of billion dollars less than was stated on its income statement (The Fall of Enron, 2016). Enron was forced to declare bankruptcy on December 2, 2001. The primary reasons behind the scandal at Enron was the negligence of Enron’s auditing group Arthur Andersen who helped the company to continually perpetrate the fraud (The Fall of Enron, 2016). The Enron collapse had a huge effect on present accounting regulations and rules.

    Read More

More about Invisible Barriers

Open Document