Essay on "1980s Commentators Suggested That a Glass Ceiling"

Essay 5 pages (1853 words) Sources: 8 Style: Harvard

[EXCERPT] . . . .

1980s commentators suggested that a "glass ceiling" prevented women from entering senior management positions. Do you think the glass ceiling still exists? In your answer discuss the concept of a glass ceiling and the reasons it might, or might not, still exist.

The Glass Ceiling: Cracked but Not Shattered

In the 1980s, commentators suggested that a "glass ceiling" prevented women from entering senior management positions. Certainly, this so-called glass ceiling has been manifested in a number of ways that have in fact adversely affected the ability of many women in gaining access to the top levels of the corporate world, but there is more involved in this analysis than a casual commentator might realize. To determine the extent to which the glass ceiling continues to exist and prevent women from gaining this access, this paper provides a review of the relevant peer-reviewed and scholarly literature concerning recent trends in breaking the glass ceiling in general and how these trends have played out in Australia in particular. A summary of the research and important findings are presented in the conclusion.

Review and Discussion

Background and Overview.

In their book, Human Resources, Care Giving, Career Progression, and Gender, Coyne, Coyne and Lee (2004) report that, "Although the term 'glass ceiling' was first coined and popularised by the media during the late 1970s, its 'discovery' resulted from the work of the feminist movement over the years" (p. 11). According to Morrison, White and Van Velsor (1994), in spite of significant progress in the women's rights movement, the glass ceiling was still firmly in place during the last decade of the 20th century. As these authors advise, "Many women have paid their dues, even a premium, for a chance at a top position, only to find a glass ceiling between them and their goal. The glass ceiling is not simply a barrier for an individual, based on the person's inability to handle a higher-level job. Rather, the glass ceiling applies to women as a group who are kept from advancing higher because they are women" (Morrison et al., p. 13).

Unfortunately, the glass ceiling also affects minorities and female members of minorities in especially adverse ways. Complicating the matter, though, is the insidious nature of the phenomenon. As Naff (2001) emphasizes, "The metaphor [glass ceiling] suggests that the underrepresentation of women and people of color in top-level positions cannot be entirely explained by a lack of qualifications, disinclination to hold such positions, or even because of overt discrimination. Rather, the obstacles that impede them are elusive, and nearly imperceptible" (p. 67). For the women who continue to experience the adverse effects of the glass ceiling in "keeping them in their place," though, these obstacles are much more real and these issues are discussed further below.

The Existence of the Glass Ceiling.

Not surprisingly, an increasing amount of attention has been directed at determining both the existence and extent of the glass ceiling in both the public and private sector in a number of Western nations around the world. For example, a report undertaken in 1995 by Federal Glass Ceiling Commission in the United States, for example, found that "significant barriers continue to exist... [that] impede the advancement of qualified people of color and women" (quoted in Naff at p. 69). Another report a two years earlier by another federal agency, the Merit Systems Protection Board, suggested that the women who were adversely affected by the glass ceiling had at least some control over the factors that contributed to its presence in the first place. This report found that "a glass ceiling does exist that] consists, in part, of factors that women can control, such as their education, experience, and mobility. It also consists of factors outside of women's control such as unfounded judgments about their lack of job commitment and their ability to do their jobs well" (quoted in Naff at p. 69).

Notwithstanding their ability to control at least some aspects of their encounters with the glass ceiling, Masser and Abrams (2004) suggest that until there is a sea change in the existing "good old boy" networks that control many aspects of the corporate world, the glass ceiling will remain firmly in place. According to these authors, "Hostile, but not benevolent, sexism is associated with negative evaluation of an individual female target competing for a masculine-typed organizational role. To the extent that a woman poses a threat (in an employment context), hostile sexism will serve to reinforce the glass ceiling to keep women in their (so-called) rightful place" (Masser and Abrams, p. 609). In spite of its distant geographical proximity to the United States, the glass ceiling has also affected women and minorities in Australia, and these issues are discussed further below.

The Glass Ceiling in Australia.

Concerning the existence of the glass ceiling in Australia, Mcallister, Dowrick and Hassan (2003) note that, "There is good evidence that areas of the labour market in which women are concentrated suffer significant wage disadvantages, with the concentration of women in casual and part-time jobs also producing poorer employment conditions for women's jobs. The lack of women in senior managerial positions, particularly in the private sector, has received some attention, with particular interest in the 'glass ceiling' hypothesis" (p. 508). Furthermore, Greig, Lewins and White (2003) report that the same trends have been experience as in many other countries in recent years, with legislative gains being introduced on the one hand while the long-standing and firmly institutionalized aspects of the glass ceiling remaining firmly in place on the other. According to Greig and his colleagues, "Despite formal equality, then, patriarchal relations have persisted and their strength is revealed in the shifting terms under which gender equality is fought. First, 'formal equality' has created a glass ceiling, whereby women can aspire to advance their careers but face unseen, informal barriers" (p. 208). Like the women's movement in the United States and elsewhere, despite these legal codifications of what is legal and what is desirable, the glass ceiling remains cracked but unshattered for many Australian women today. In this regard, Greig and his associates report that, "As the structures of inequality have been transformed over the past two decades, the barrier to women's upward mobility has been characterised as a glass ceiling, accounting for discrepancies between the formal equality that parliamentary struggle has achieved, women's expectations and the persistence of gender inequality" (p. 219). Likewise, Parkhouse (2001) also confirms that, even in the early 1990s, women making waves near the top were still rare enough to warrant attention" (pp. 53-54). Because of the biological realities that differentiate men and women, it is apparent that some types of jobs have become associated with females and others with males, and these unseen and shifting definitions also play an important role in reinforcing or breaking the glass ceiling. In this regard, the few relevant and timely studies that have examined the existence and prevalence of the glass ceiling in Australia have found that gender discrimination in general is widespread, but gender segmentation of jobs also represents an important component of this process. According to Mcallister and his colleagues, the Australian research to date has shown that, "Simple discrimination, in which employers (particularly men) avoid appointing women to jobs or fail to promote them, remains well-documented. However, equally pervasive effects are produced through the gendering of jobs and occupations as male or female, so that particular work becomes understood as embodying a form of masculinity or femininity" (p. 508). Women's advocates in Australia have demonstrated that some areas of work are widely regarded as being "women's jobs" because they involve direct subordination to men in workplaces (for example, secretaries or nurses) in many cases; there may also be a perceived relationship between these types of jobs representing true "women's domestic work" (Mcallister et al., p. 508). Indeed, writing in Australian Journal of Social Issues, Wright (2007) makes the suggestion that in Australia, "Unpaid household and childcare commitments are now more restrictive to women's career progression than other, market factors such as discrimination [and] that 'the real glass ceiling is at home.' Unpaid household work performed within the family makes up part of an individual's work experience, and potentially influences fertility decisions. This provokes the use of time use data, particularly studies of unpaid work performance, in demographic theory" (p. 513). Therefore, even those studies intended to ferret out ongoing discriminatory practices against women may be skewed by these inherently gendered factors that do not relate to a woman's ability to perform an executive-level job but rather rely on spurious and unrelated biological factors. In fact, in those rare cases where women in Australia have actually managed to break through the glass ceiling and achieve some parity with their executive male colleagues, they have been forced to "act like a man" to do so. In this regard, Mcallister and his associates emphasize that, "On the other side, stories about women's lack of certain essential abilities are used to justify regarding certain… READ MORE

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