Women In The Workplace: The Glass Ceiling

The glass ceiling Another issue pertaining to gender in the workplace is the lack of women in upper management positions. This is referred to as the glass ceiling for the invisible barriers that prevent women from ascending to higher roles. The gender bias that leads to the glass ceiling, sometimes called second-generation bias, is not an overt or explicit. “Second-generation bias does not require an intent to exclude; nor does if necessarily produce direct, immediate harm to any individual. Rather it creates a context—akin to ‘something in the water’—in which women fail to thrive or reach their full potential” (Ibarra, Ely & Kolb, 2013, p. 64). There is no written rule that women cannot hold upper management positions and no one is purposely

Since most upper management positions have historically gone to men our mental model of a manager is a man and we see no need to change this if it is working (Bruckmüller & Branscombe, 2011). This is why women have a better change of gaining upper management positions if the organization is facing a crisis. A major factor leading to the glass ceiling is the stereotypes and unconscious biases we hold towards women. Female managers are more likely to be viewed in a negative light and working mothers are seen as less competent. This bias may even be well intentioned by giving working mothers less responsibilities in an attempt to help the mother spend more time with her children (Williams, 2003). These are the types of biases that keep women from promotions and upper level management positions without anyone even noticing that it is

In their 2016 report, the American Association of University Women (AAUW) found that in the United States, women working full time mad only eighty percent of what men earned in 2015. This report shows a general gender pay gap of twenty percent. However, there has been a great deal of debate surrounding the gender pay gap. Some of the topics that have been debated about the gender pay gap are its size, the reasons for the gap, and whether of not it is fair. The gender pay gap is a complex issue and the lack of awareness around it only adds to the debate (Lips,