Wait a second!
More handpicked essays just for you.
More handpicked essays just for you.
Introduction and background of career development
Introduction and background of career development
Introduction and background of career development
Don’t take our word for it - see why 10 million students trust us with their essay needs.
Recommended: Introduction and background of career development
The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier preventing women and minorities from advancing into upper management (Bell 67). Despite extensive legislation and the widespread implementation of equal opportunity policies, there is still widespread structural inequality and job segregation in organizations throughout the United States. "The level of the `glass ceiling' varies among organizations and is reflected in different employment patterns, hiring practices, and promotion plans" (Adler 451). The purpose of this paper is to provide background as well as a more in-depth analysis of the glass ceiling phenomenon and apply a human-capitalistic theorist perspective to the issues.
Women are underrepresented in managerial (Adler 451) and executive level positions within organizations in the United States even today. Although females embody almost fifty percent of the workforce (Adler 451, they occupy only about thirty percent of all salaried positions, twenty percent of middle manager positions, and about five percent of executive level positions (Bell 65). At the current rate of increase in executive women, it will take until 2466 or over 450 years to reach equality with executive men.
There are three major barriers that prevent women from moving into the upper hierarchies of management in an organization; these include (1) societal barriers, (2) internal structural barriers, and (3) governmental barriers (GCC 7).
"Societal barriers which may be outside the control of business" include barriers relating to educational opportunity and attainment as well as the difference barrier, which is the conscious or unconscious "stereotyping, prejudice, and bias related to gender" (GCC 7-8). Women are perceived as being less knowl...
... middle of paper ...
...change agents." Journal of Business Ethics 37.1 (2002): 65-76.
Blum, Terry C., Dail L. Fields, and Jodi S. Goodman. "Organizational-level Determinants of Women in Management." Academy of Management Journal 37.2 (1994): 241-268.
Cotter, David A., Joan M. Hermsen, Seth Ovadia, and Reeve Vanneman. "The Glass Ceiling Effect." Social Forces 80.2 (2001): 655-682.
Dubeck, Paula J. and Kathryn Borman, eds. Women and Work `The advancement of Women in Post-Secondary Educational Administration.' New York: Rutgers University Press, 1996.
United States. U.S. Merit Systems Protection Board: Glass Ceiling Commission. A Question of Equity: Women and the Glass Ceiling. Washington: 1995.
Ohlott, Patricia J., Marian N. Ruderman, and Cynthia McCauley. "Gender Differences in Managers' Developmental Job Experiences." The Academy of Management Journal 37.1 (1994): 46-67.
After doing some critical thinking, I decided to select the "Glass Ceiling Theory" as my topic. My thesis statement will include how research proves that the "Glass Ceiling Theory" isn't a theory at all, it is an authentic term used to describe the invisible barrier that keeps women and minorities from advancing in the corporate world. The term "Glass Ceiling" can apply to women who are kept from elevating in the corporate world because they are female. Female executives are reduced to particular types of jobs, often staff and supportive jobs that provide limited opportunity for growth. I believe that men and women were proven to be equal decades ago, but the earnings of women in comparison to men are unjust. On average, women earn less than
Powell, G., Butterfield, D., and Bartol, K. (2008). Leader evaluations: A new female advantage? Gender in Management: An International Journal, 23, 156-174.
The glass ceiling is defined as the “unseen, yet unbreachable barrier that keeps… women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements.” According to the Department of Labor, the glass ceiling is made up of “artificial barriers [that are] based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevent qualified individuals from advancing upward in their organization into management-level positions.” Qualified women are continuously denied a promotion to the highest levels of corporate America and other professions. Once women reach a certain level at their career, they plateau and the glass ceiling prevents them from advancing any higher.
Schwartz, Felice N.”Management Women and the New Facts of Life.” Harvard Business Review Jan.-Feb. 1999: 3-14.
The "glass ceiling" has held women back from certain positions and opportunities in the workplace. Women are stereotyped as part-time, lower-grade workers with limited opportunities for training and advancement because of this "glass ceiling". How have women managed their careers when confronted by this glass ceiling? It has been difficult; American women have struggled for their role in society since 1848. Women’s roles have changed significantly throughout the past centuries because of their willingness and persistence. Women have contributed to the change pace of their role in the workplace by showing motivation and perseverance.
The glass ceiling and glass escalator are both important phenomenon that affect women in American society today. The glass ceiling affects the amount of women in leadership roles in politics. As the prestige and level of power increases, the amount of women in those positions fall. The glass escalator shows how men in women dominated fields hold an advantage over their women counterparts. Men in men dominated fields and women dominated fields receive better benefits and
In no way will this paper deny workplace inequality, but rather by using research, data and logical argumentation, it will attempt to dispel the negativity, and clarify the reasons for variation among wages and success between genders within the United States workforce. This paper will explain the idea of a glass ceiling that is not socially constructed, but rather is now in the process of being re-studied and possibly explained as a self-fulfilled prophecy.
Also, the majority of women have been able to secure employment from traditionally female occupations such as teaching compared to male-dominated careers like engineering. Moreover, democratic country like the United States of America has recognized gender inequality as a fundamental issue and espouse equal right between men and women in contributing to social, economic and cultural life. Despite this improvement, gender inequality persists as women are not represented and treated equally in the workplace (Michialidis, Morphitou, & Theophylatou, 2012). The increasing number of women in the workplace has not provided equal opportunity for career advancement for females due to the way women are treated in an organization and the society. Also, attaining an executive position seem impossible for women due to the glass ceiling effects which defines the invisible and artificial barrier created by attitudinal and organizational prejudices, which inhibit women from attaining top executive positions (Wirth
Women face an unofficial barrier called the glass ceiling, which limits how high a women can advance in a profession. “Women holding the titles of chairman, CEO, COO (chief operating officer), and executive vice president remain at about 7 percent of the population of executives in the United States” (Hoobler, Wayne, & Lemmon, 2009). Women seem to have more of a family-work conflict then men, so bosses don’t seem to have as much desire, to promote females compared to men (Hoobler, Wayne, & Lemmon 939-940). Men still view women as having a social role, examples are cooking, childcare, and household chores. Men feel threatened, and scared when females are able to handle both work and their personal life. Excuses are created by men, where they believe females should focus on one role, because they won’t be able to accomplish family roles and work roles efficiently. Women can help themselves with this issue of family-work conflict, by, improving communication with their employers. Women can communicate to their employer, by explaining and clarifying their expectations on how much workload they can
There have been changes in regards to women in top positions within the last few years. However, although those advances are positive, they are still no where equal. A certain statistic may say that there has been a 14% increase in the number of women in executive jobs for a certain company. However, although that increase is no doubt positive, it fails to tell the true story. That increase is only increases from a very minute number, if not zero, of women who previously held that position. Another thing that that statistic fails to mention is that the most of them include women in that position as that company from all of its worldwide locations. In other words, only 14% of executives around that world for a certa...
Jones states in his Gallup news article entitled Americans Say Equal Pay Top Issue for Working Women, (Jones, 2014) that the data from a September 2014 Gallup poll shows that two of the most important issues facing working women in this country today are equal/fair pay and equal opportunity for advancement and promotion. These concerns placed higher than the issues of better childcare and healthcare and the economy in general. The number of working women in the United States is almost equal to that of men, however the challenges women face in establishing careers and advancing in them is different from men. The EEOC Women 's Work Group issued a report (EEOC Women 's Work Group, 2010) that cites many of the biggest challenges for women seeking equal opportunities in the workplace. These include lack of mentoring and grooming for management positions, being less likely to be invited to networking events, women not being granted training and developmental assignments on as equal footing as men, and women not being targeted in recruitment efforts for upper level and management positions. In order to combat these discriminatory practices, employers should develop mentoring programs and monitor their effectiveness, actively making sure that women are as equally included as men. Senior level officials should be expected to mentor subordinates and that mentoring should not be gender biased. Businesses should perform a barrier analysis to discover what obstacles
In addition, women are seen to have a ‘glass-ceiling’ in their employment opportunities. They have the qualifications and skills, but reach a point where it's difficult to gain a high paying
What Is the Glass Ceiling? Some may think that the glass ceiling is actually a ceiling made of glass. Although it is an interesting thought it is much more than that. “The term was originally coined by Hymowitz and Schellhardt in a Wall Street Journal report in 1986 to represent the barriers that women who attempted and aspired to senior management positions faced” (Lockwood 2004). The glass ceiling is an intangible barrier that makes it near impossible for women and those of ethnicities, other than Caucasian, from a achieving a job of high corporate status.
The frustrating thing about this kind of oppression is that it is covert and cannot be seen. Instead of being a tangible barrier that would be easy to identify, a glass ceiling in the workplace persists in very subtle ways. It is not visible, but it is all too real for the women who are faced with it as presented in this
...which benefit an organization however, they are seldom valued as compared to the more traditional male aggressive, dominant traits. Top managerial positions come with a price for women and studies performed by Hoffnung (2004) indicate professional women delay relationships or starting a family in order to advance in their careers (as cited in Nadler & Stockdale, 2012, p. 282).