Invisible Barriers

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