A Theoretical Study on ‘Glass Ceiling Concept’

GLASS CEILING

GLASS CEILING
Myth or Reality………?

A THEORETICAL STUDY ON ‘GLASS
CEILING CONCEPT’

ABDUL RAHIMAN MEHAROOF M.A.

(Reg. No. 082060301)

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DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK, SIMS, PANDESHWAR, MANGALORE Page

GLASS CEILING

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK
SRINIVAS INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES
PANDESHWAR, MANGALORE – 575 001.
2009-2010

A THEORETICAL STUDY ON
‘GLASS CEILING CONCEPT’

TERM PAPER SUBMITTED TO DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL
WORK, SRINIVAS INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT
STUDIES,

IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQIUREMENTS
FOR
MASTERS DEGREE IN SOCIAL WORK (M.S.W.)

ABDUL RAHIMAN MEHAROOF M.A’

(Reg. No. 082060301)

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GLASS CEILING

Under the Guidance of
Dr. Ashok Antony D’ Souza

DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL WORK

SRINIVAS INSTITUTE OF MANAGEMENT STUDIES

PANDESHWAR, MANGALORE – 575001

INTRODUCTION
The modern society is often characterized as highly democratic, humanistic and

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advanced. At the same time, the arguments, concerning the real equality of all
people regardless their race, gender, or social position, still persist. In such a
situation, the arguments concerning the position of female in the modern society
are among the most contradictive since on the one hand, there are people who
sincerely believe that women have eventually managed to get an equal position in
society compared to men and, at the present days, they have really equal
opportunities as men do. On the other hand, there is a totally different view on the
position of women in the modern society, according to which the glass ceiling still
remains an unsurpassable barrier women regularly face in their life. The latter
position is more realistic and corresponds to the actual position of females in the
modern society since their leadership is still rather an exception than a norm.

Both points of view are grounded on certain reasons which should be analyzed in
order to fully reveal the extent to which the belief in the real improvement of the
position of women in the modern society and their access to top positions is
erroneous. First of all, it should be said that the fact that women have made a great
progress compared to the previous epoch is beyond a doubt. It is really true that
females play a significant role in the modern society and they have larger
opportunities and formally they have absolutely equal rights compared to men. As
a rule, those, who believe that the glass ceiling syndrome has gone and totally
vanished from the modern society, stand on the ground that modern women have
not only equal rights compared to men but also have wide opportunities to realize
their right.
In this respect, it is necessary to agree that nowadays women have really got a
chance to receive the same basis for their future professional development and
career growth. To put it more precisely, modern women have access to education
and have an opportunity to receive higher education of the same quality that men
do that is one of the basic conditions of their future perspectives as potential
leaders.
Furthermore, it is really an unarguable fact that rights of women and their
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opportunities are recognized and amply supported by the modern legislation which
focuses on the protection of women against any sort of discrimination, including
the gender-related discrimination. Moreover, women are not viewed as secondary-
class citizens anymore who are supposed to spend all their life taking care about
their families, children and household. However, probably the strongest argument
of those, who believe that women have really overcome the glass ceiling
syndrome, is the assumption that, nowadays, women are widely represented in
practically all spheres of life and, what is more, often they occupy the leading
positions.

To put it more precisely, it is possible to estimate that many women are quite
successful politicians. For instance, nowadays, the perspective of two female-
candidates on the next President elections in the US seems to be quite real. Similar
trends may be observed in other countries of the world, such as Germany, where
the Chancellor, i.e. the head of the government, is a woman, or the UK, which has
already experienced the epoch of Margaret Thatcher as the Prime Minister.
Practically, the same situation is estimated to be in economic sphere. The
supporters of the belief that the current situation indicates to the end of the epoch
of the glass ceiling underline that women may be also fond among CEOs and in
boardrooms of the most powerful companies and financial organizations. For
instance, a woman is chief executive of the London Stock Exchange and the
similar examples may be found in other developed countries, including the US.
In such a way, judging from such a significant penetration of women on top
positions in politics and economy, it is really possible to believe that there is no
glass ceiling syndrome anymore. The reality: the unsurpassable glass ceiling
Unfortunately, the reality turns to be quite different from such an optimistic belief.

In actuality, the position of women has hardly changed substantially in recent years
or even decades. Regardless the seemingly growing presentation of women in
politics and economy, in actuality, they still remain underrepresented in a male-
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dominated society, especially women are missing from top jobs.
Even though women can have a real chance to receive the higher education
similarly to men but this does not necessarily mean that they will and actually have
the real opportunities to realize the acquired skills, abilities and knowledge in their
professional life. To put it more precisely, the recent researchers reveal the fact that
81% of well-qualified women that can occupy top positions face serious barriers
engendered by the existing stereotypes and preconceptions (Andrica 1997) which
are basically generated by male and accumulated in the society where male
ideology is dominating.

Furthermore, researchers also point out that many employers simply feel an
aversion to taking a risk by hiring a woman, or not clearly planning their careers or
job assignments to benefit them and, what is more, less than 1% of CEOs see the
development of high potential of women as a priority (Feldman 1997).
In such a way, it is obvious that the stereotypes and biases still prevent women
from an opportunity to occupy top positions in organizations. In this respect, it is
even possible to speak about the failure of anti-discrimination legislation, which,
being actually good in principle, has turned to be unable to change the stereotypes
that have been existing for decades, if not to say centuries. Moreover, speaking
about the wider opportunities of women in relation to their professional careers, it
is necessary to underline that top positions still remain hardly accessible to women.

In actuality, in spite of the substantial growth of women working in different
spheres, including those which were traditionally believed as purely male-
dominated, they are still unrepresented on the top level. In other words, even
though there is a growing share of female in organizations their perspectives of
gaining high or top positions are extremely low. As a result, the share of women
among CEOs is extremely low as well. For instance, according to a recent study
only 7-9% of senior managers at Fortune 1000 firms are women (Castro 1997).
The same may be said about politics where a few women that have access to
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leading positions while, taken at large, politics still remain the domain of men.
Moreover, the conditions of work and payment are still unequal. It is not a secret
that many women can hardly maintain their careers after having children. This is
particularly true for women that used to play the leading role in organizations
where they occupied top positions.

It is also important to underline that pay gaps are also the reality of the modern life
since, as a rule, men still have more chances to receive a better paid job, or, what is
more, men earn more than women even though they fulfill absolutely the same job.
Remarkably, the gap for part-time job is traditionally wider than for the full-time
job. As a result, asking for flexible working still spells career death for many
women in today’s workplace.

At the same time, it is also worthy of mention another side of the problem of the
still progressing glass ceiling. In fact, often specialists, when they speak about the
glass ceiling or poor or equal opportunities of women, forget that there are also
women from ethnic minorities who, at the present moment, seem to be practically
unrepresented among the leaders of organizations, neither in politics nor in
business. In fact, the cases when a non-white woman is a CEO, for instance, are
very seldom.

MEANING AND DEFINITION OF GLASS CEILING
In HR term glass ceiling refers to an artificial barrier based on attitudinal or
organizational bias prevents qualified women/ other minorities from advancing
upward into senior management level positions or situations where the
advancement of a qualified person within the hierarchy of an organization is
stopped at a lower level because of some form of discrimination, most
commonly sexism or racism, but since the term was coined, “glass ceiling” has also
come to describe the limited advancement of the deaf, blind, disabled, and aged.

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It is believed to be an unofficial, invisible barrier that prevents women and
minorities from advancing in businesses or barrier to career advancement an
unofficial but real impediment to some body’s advancement into upper level
management positions because of discrimination based on the person’s gender,
age, race, ethnicity or sexual preference. It is also defined as an unacknowledged
discriminatory barrier that prevents women and minorities from rising to positions
of power or responsibility, as within a corporation.
OVERVIEW

This situation is referred to as a "ceiling" as there is a limitation blocking upward
advancement, and "glass" (transparent) because the limitation is not immediately
apparent and is normally an unwritten and unofficial policy. This invisible barrier
continues to exist, even though there are no explicit obstacles keeping minorities
from acquiring advanced job positions – there are no advertisements that
specifically say “no minorities hired at this establishment”, nor are there any
formal orders that say “minorities are not qualified” (largely due to the fact
that Equal employment opportunity laws forbid this kind of discrimination, and
open admittance of it is career suicide) – but they do lie beneath the surface. When
a company exercises said discrimination, they will usually attempt to use an
indirect justification, such as "You are shouting obscenities that upset the
customers," as opposed to directly saying, "You have Tourette syndrome." The
"glass ceiling" is distinguished from formal barriers to advancement, such as
education or experience requirements. Mainly this invisible barrier seems to exist
in more of the developing countries, in whose businesses this effect is highly
"visible".

However, this glass ceiling tends to cripple working women the most. This barrier
prevents large numbers of women, ethnic minorities, and sexual minorities from
obtaining and securing the most powerful, prestigious, and highest-grossing jobs in
the workforce. This barrier makes many women feel as they are not worthy enough

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to have these high-ranking positions, but also they feel as if their bosses do not
take them seriously or actually see them as potential candidate

HISTORY
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Sexual discrimination was outlawed in the United States through the Civil Rights
Act of 1964 in the hopes of allowing women to rise in the working world once
proper experience has been achieved.

The term "glass ceiling" has been thought to have first been used to refer to
invisible barriers that impede the career advancement of women in the American
workforce in an article by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt in the March
24, 1986 edition of the Wall Street Journal. However, the term was used prior to
that; for instance, it was utilized in a March 1984 Adweek article by Gay Bryant.
The term glass ceiling was used prior to the 1984 article by two women at Hewlett-
Packard in 1979, Katherine Lawrence and Marianne Schreiber, to describe how
while on the surface there seemed to be a clear path of promotion, in actuality
women seemed to hit a point which they seemed unable to progress beyond. Upon
becoming CEO and chairwoman of the board of HP, Carly Fiorina proclaimed that
there was no glass ceiling. After her term at HP, she called her earlier statement a
“[d]umb thing to say.”

However, the term was used by the U.S. Department of Labor in 1991 in response
to a study of nine Fortune 500 companies. The study confirmed that women and
minorities encountered considerable glass ceiling barriers in their careers; these
barriers were experienced earlier in their professions than previously thought.

United States Senator Hillary Clinton used the term glass ceiling in her speech to
endorse Senator Barack Obama for President: "And although we weren’t able to
shatter that highest, hardest glass ceiling this time, thanks to you, it's got about 18
million cracks in it."

HR professionals are also required to be knowledgeable of employment laws,
programs and practices for their organization. Because the law provides protection
for certain demographic groups, such as women, in the labor market, HR
professionals need to understand the potential impact of glass-ceiling barriers (e.g.,
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discrimination) on women--including women of color--regarding advancement in
the workplace.

REASONS FOR THE GLASS CEILING

Late 1970s – Early 1980s:

• Women lacked required experience and skills
• They were restricted to clerical and other support services jobs

Mid – Late 1980s:

• Trends started changing
• More women took up higher education in management
• Looked for careers in operating areas
• The debate over the existence of the Glass Ceiling began

PROBLEMS IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES

• Culture issues
• Male Chauvinism
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• Marriage
• Corporate organisations do not favour women
• Unwritten rule of not employing women

On the Greener Side..

Women Managers are praised for:

► Soft Skills
► Caring
► Understanding
► Good teamwork
► Good communication skills
► Patience
► Perseverance
► Style of Management
► Unique skills

TYPES OF GLASS CEILING BARRIERS

 Different pay for comparable work.

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 Sexual, ethnic, racial, religious discrimination or harassment in the
workplace
 Lack of family-friendly workplace policies (or, on the flipside, pro-
child/pro-family values that discriminate against homosexuals, non-parents,
or single parents)
 Exclusion from informal networks; Stereotyping and preconceptions of
women's roles and abilities; Failure of senior leadership to assume
accountability for women's advancement; Lack of role models; Lack of
mentoring
 Requiring long hours for advancement, sometimes called the hour-glass
ceiling.

Sexism and glass ceiling effects - The gender wage gap

This gap is the difference in both the wages and earnings between males and
females who have equivalent job titles, training experience, education, and
professions. In most circumstances, women are paid less than men when all of
these factors are comparable. A comparison frequently cited is that women make
75.3 cents on the dollar to men, which is derived from statistics maintained by the
United States Census Bureau from 2003, relating specifically to an across-the-
board comparison of year-round full-time workers.

David R. Hekman and colleagues (2009) found that customers prefer white men
employees, which is why such workers may continue to earn 25 percent more than
equally-well performing women and minorities. Hekman et al. (2009) found that
customers who viewed videos featuring a black male, a white female, or a white
male actor playing the role of an employee helping a customer were 19% more
satisfied with the white male employee's performance and also were more satisfied
with the store's cleanliness and appearance. This despite that all three actors
performed identically, read the same script, and were in the exact same location
with identical camera angles and lighting. Moreover, 45 percent of the customers

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were women and 41 percent were non-white, indicating that even women and
minority customers prefer white men. In a second study, they found that white
male doctors were rated as more approachable and competent than equally-well
performing women or minority doctors. They interpret their findings to suggest
that employers are willing to pay more for white male employees because
employers are customer driven and customers are happier with white male
employees. They also suggest that what is required to solve the problem of wage
inequality isn't necessarily paying women more but changing customer biases. This
paper has been featured in many media outlets including The New York Times, The
Washington Post, The Boston Globe, and National Public Radio.

A customer preference for white men may also help explain why white men hold
the highest paying, most prestigious, and most powerful jobs in the occupational
structure. This is referred to as occupational segregation. Men tend to be highly
concentrated in the top professions, such as supervisors, managers, executives, and
production operators. On the other hand, women tend to be over-represented in the
lowest-ranking and lowest paid professions in the workforce, such as secretaries,
sales associates, teachers, nurses, and child care providers. As a result, occupations
become “sex typed” as either being specifically male or female jobs. The
stereotypically male-characterized occupations, in which at least 60-75% of the
workers are males, are more highly paid than occupations in which 60-75% of the
jobholders are women. This segregation of women into less-prestigious and lower-
ranked jobs also decreases a woman’s chance of being promoted, as well as the
chance of having any type of power over others. Moreover, occupational
segregation reduces women’s access to insurance, benefits, and pensions.

Males not only have superior statuses than women between jobs, but also within
the jobs themselves Women are concentrated into the lower-ranked and lower-paid
occupations within a given profession. If women are in management positions,
they are more likely to be in personnel than in marketing professions; the averages
salaries of each are $48,048 and $56,940 per year, respectively. Another example

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occurs within the medical field. Female doctors are much more likely to be heavily
constricted in the family practice or pediatric specialties, which average about
$130,000 and $126,000 per year, respectively. However, men are more likely to
become surgeons and highly specialized medical practitioners, who tend to average
$240,000 or more per year.

This gender wage gap is present within all realms of the workforce – blue collar,
managerial, and professional occupations. Only 16% of the top executive positions
in America’s largest corporations and enterprises are held by women. Additionally,
the median weekly income of full-time working women is only 70.5% of full-time
working men. This statistic tends to hold true across all fields of work. This gender
imbalance in occupations occurs to some degree because women are more likely
than men to be newcomers in many fields; therefore, they lack the primacy and the
increased pay that comes with seniority.

Gender Inequality is often embedded within the social hierarchy and this affects
how women and men are perceived in leadership roles. Different traits are ascribed
to females when compared to males that often color the selection process with
unfounded bias. If a female does have other traits aside from the gendered traits
that she is believed to possess, then she is viewed negatively. For example, in a
study conducted by Thomas-Hunt and Phillips (2004) they found that when women
possessed expertise they were actually viewed as less influential by others.
However, expertise was positive for males. Also, female led groups were less
productive than male led groups even though the women held expertise in the area
just like males. Therefore, possessing expertise is not viewed as positively as it is
for males. This also suggests that lack of skills is not the only reason why women
are not deemed worthy of leadership roles. As cited by Lyness and Thompson in
1997, one consequence of sex stereotypes is that women's achievements tend to be
devalued or attributed to luck or effort rather than ability or skill,and therefore this
stereotype has the potential to reduce the organizational awards that they receive.

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Lyness and Heilman (2006) found that in a study conducted with 448 upper-level
employees that women were less likely to be promoted than males, and if they
were promoted they had stronger performance ratings than males. However,
performance ratings were more strongly connected to promotions for women than
men. This suggests that women had to be highly impressive to be considered
eligible for leadership roles, whereas this was not the case for men. In a number of
longitudinal studies (Cox & Harquail, 1991; Olson, Frieze, & Good, 1987; Strober,
1982; Wallace, 1989; Wood, Corcoran, & Courant, 1993), that track comparably
qualified men and women, such as graduates of the same MBA program or law
school, it has been shown that over time there is degradation of the women's
compensation that cannot fully be explained by differences in qualifications, work
history, experience, or career interruptions.

Women are more likely to choose jobs based on factors other than pay, for
instance: health care and scheduling that can be managed with the duties of
primary care of children for which women are still overwhelmingly responsible,
and thus they may be less likely to take jobs that require travel or relocation or jobs
that are hazardous. On average, women take more time off and work fewer hours,
often due to the unequal distribution of childcare labor, domestic labor, medical
needs specific to women, and other family issues that tend to fall to a woman's
responsibility per the gender roles assigned by society. The ending result of
women’s extensive obligation to attend to responsibilities of the home and children
is that their wages plummet. Family demands have a downward pull on women’s
earnings as they proceed throughout their life course. The earnings gap tends to
widen considerably when men and women are in their early to mid-thirties; the gap
reaches the widest point when men and women are in their fifties.

Another perspective on the gender wage gap comes from a 2008 research study by
Judge and Livingston. They investigated the relationship(s) between gender,
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gender role orientation, and labor marker earnings. The study did not specifically
look at the gender wage gap, but focused more on the impact that the interaction
between gender role orientation (people’s beliefs about what occupations are
considered suitable and appropriate for males and females) and gender has on
earnings. The researchers suggested that the gender wage gap cannot fully be
explained through economic factors, offering that underlying psychological
components and attitudes account for some of the difference. They found that
while traditional gender roles were positively connected to earnings, that gender
significantly predicted the amount and direction of this relationship. For instance,
traditional gender role orientation was positively related with earnings for males,
providing them with strong earnings. Meanwhile, traditional gender role
orientation was slightly negatively associated with earnings for females, providing
them weaker earnings. This suggests that men who have traditional male-female
attitudes about working are rewarded in the workplace for seeking to maintain the
social order, while women were neither rewarded nor punished. In general, the
study indicated that even though gender role beliefs are beginning to become less
traditional for men and women, traditional gender role orientation continues to
intensify the gender wage gap.

THE GLASS CEILING AND DISCLOSURE OF SEXUAL
ORIENTATION

In order to excel in the workplace it is important that people are familiar with a
workers strong attributes. This may present obstacles for the LGBT community
because their sexual orientation may be a large factor that plays in to how they
identify themselves. In a study done by Ragins in 2004, disclosure of sexual
orientation has been found to have some positive, some negative, and non
significant effects on work attitudes, psychological strain, and compensation.
Ragins, Singh and Cornwell in 2007, found that in some cases disclosure of sexual

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orientation has been found to result in reports of verbal harassment, job
termination, and even physical assault. (D'Augelli & Grossman, 2001; Friskopp &
Silverstein, 1996). In their study, Ragins, Singh and Cornwell examined fear of
disclosure only among LGBT employees who had not disclosed, or had not fully
disclosed their sexual identity at work. Promotion rate and compensation were
used to measure career outcomes. Promotions were defined as involving two or
more of the following criteria that may occur within or between organizations:
significant increases in salary; significant increases in scope of responsibility;
changes in job level or rank; or becoming eligible for bonuses, incentives, and
stock plans. Given this definition, respondents were asked how many promotions
they had received over the past 10 years. Respondents also reported their current
annual compensation, which included salary, bonuses, commissions, stock options,
and profit sharing. The findings showed that those who feared more negative
consequences to disclosure reported less job satisfaction, organizational
commitment, satisfaction with opportunities for promotion, career commitment,
and organization-based self-esteem and greater turnover intentions than those who
feared less negative consequences.

WOMEN SURPASSING THE GLASS CEILING

Although there is a glass ceiling, many women recently have surpassed that hurdle.
When at the top management, many women feel isolated like outsiders . Most of
the time they are the only female at that level and are surrounded by males. Many
women have faced sexual harassment, wage inequality, blocked movement and
gender stereotyped roles. Women are said to have different styles of leadership and
management once they break the barrier. They are generalized to be more
nurturing and caring in nature than men . Men are stereotypically, more “tough”
and shrewd in business, which is sometimes seen as positive traits. Women’s
traditional role is in the home, taking care of children, and keeping house. The
stereotype of maternal leadership stems from that. Some men in senior
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management that do not want to see women climb the corporate ladder believe that
they do not have the qualities to lead a company. Many believe that making
assumptions about the way women act in a leadership position perpetuates the
stereotypes that cause the glass ceiling . There are many reasons why women have
been able to break the barrier. Some believe that having women on an executive
board is a positive thing . Women make 60% of all purchases in the United States,
it is common sense to want their opinion. The more women that are accepted into
management positions, the more will get promoted to senior management and
serve as role models for the younger . Younger men have also been more accepting
of female superiors . The perception of a woman’s role is changing with the
younger generation.

Women who break through the glass ceiling may also face a glass cliff whereby
they are more likely than men to occupy risky or precarious leadership positions.

VARIATIONS AND RELATED TERMS

 Brass Ceiling - In the traditionally male-dominated fields of law
enforcement and military service, some people use the term “brass ceiling” to
describe the difficulty women have when they try to rise up in
the ranks. "The brass" denotes the decision-makers at the top of an
organization, especially in the military; it is an example of synecdoche.
 Stained-Glass Ceiling is a sociological phenomenon in religious communities
similar to the concept of the "glass ceiling." The concept revolves around
the apparent difficulty for women who seek to gain a role within church
leadership.
 Bamboo Ceiling - The exclusion of Asian-descendants from executive and
managerial roles on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of
leadership potential" or "inferior communication ability" where the East
Asian-descendants candidate has superior objective credentials such as
education in high-prestige universities (in comparison to their white

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counterparts with only lower-prestige university credentials). For example,
research shows that there are a decent number of partners at leading
prestigious law firms in the United States who did not attend top notch law
schools. However, you will seldom find an East Asian American partner of
a leading law firm who did not attend a "Top 16 Law School" (according to
the US News ranking).
 Concrete Ceiling – This is a term used to describe the type of barrier
minority woman encounter. Caucasian women may face the glass ceiling in
the workforce, but be able to break through it from time to time; however,
minority women’s glass ceiling tends to be more solid and unyielding. This
‘concrete ceiling’ is due to minority women facing both issues of sexism
and racism which intensifies their obstructions in advancing within the labor
market.
 Expatriate Glass Ceiling - After breaking through the first level of the
glass ceiling, many women are beginning to face an additional barrier. This
is a term used to describe this second level of obstruction which prevents
women in managerial positions from receiving foreign management
assignments, projects, and experiences that is becoming increasingly more
important for promotion into the upper-level managerial positions as
documented by Insch, McIntyre, and Napier.
 Glass Closet - The exclusion of openly gay men and women from certain
jobs, especially in the media.
 Glass elevator (or glass escalator) - The rapid promotion of men over
women, especially into management, in female-dominated fields such
as nursing. Men in these fields are promoted with ease – they actually have
to struggle not to advance due to facing invisible pressures and expectations
to move up from where they currently are. This is based on traditional
gender roles and stereotypes that men are expected to be in the chief roles,
while women are to be in the subordinate positions. Therefore, in the fields

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where men are less common, they receive differential treatment that favors
them to exert their authority and control in the workplace.

 Glass Labyrinth - referring to something related to a maze and can find
the way out of and get through; otherwise thought of as finding a path
through power in an organization.
 Sticky Floor - refers to women who are trapped in low-wage, low
mobility jobs in state and local government.
 Sticky Ladder - A term used to describe women's struggle to reach the
top of the corporate ladder. This term describes the theory that women are
not incapable of reaching the top; they just get "stuck" on the middle
rungs of the ladder.

The effect has also inspired a musical, bearing the same name. "Glass Ceiling"
(2006), written by Bret VandenBos and Alex Krall, examined and parodied the
idiosyncrasies of both males and females in the corporate workplace.

WOMEN IN WAL-MART MANAGEMENT POSITIONS- A
CASE STUDY

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D is t r ic t M a n a g e r

S to re M a n a g e r

C o -M a n a g e r

A s s is t a n t M a n a g e rs
(1 to 7 )

M a n a g e m e n t T r a in e e D e p t H e a d s

C a s h ie rs

C a rt P u s h e r

G re e te r

S to c k e r

Percent Women in Store Mgmt & Hourly Supervisors, 2001

100
90
80
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70
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A

re Women as a Group Less Qualified for
Management?!

Performance Ratings 2004

4.6
4.4
Performance Scores

4.2
4 Women
3.8 Men
3.6
3.4
3.2
All Hourly Sales Assoc. Dept. Managers
Job Positions

POSITION AVERAGE EARNINGS %WOMEN/%MEN

Store manager 89300 / 105700 14.3% / 85.7%

56300 / 59500 22.8% / 77.2%
manager

Asst manager 37300 / 39800 35.7% / 64.3%

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Mgmt Trainee 22400 / 23200 41.3% / 58.7%

Cashier 13800 / 14500 92.5% / 7.5%

Wal-Mart facts
• About 65% of hourly employees are women, compared to about 33% of
management employees.
• From date of hire until being promoted into an assistant manager position it took
on average 4.38 years for women, compared to 2.86 years for men.
• To be store manager, the average male needed 8.64 years compared to 10.12
years for a female

INDIANS WHO BROKE THE GLASS CEILING

India Inc is dominated by men. Women do not have proportionate representation
in companies, and yet they are better off than women in other parts of the world
when it comes to top positions.

Eleven per cent of 240 large companies -- Indian-owned as well as multinational,
private as well as state-owned -- have women CEOs, according to a study carried
out by executive search firm EMA Partners. By contrast, only 3 per cent of the
Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs.
24

GLASS CEILING

Still, most experts say women are under-represented in corner offices across the
world. "Given that roughly about 50 per cent of our population is female, that
about 50 per cent of staff is female in most markets, the gender is hugely
unrepresented in boards and at the CEO level," said EMA Partners International
chairman James Douglas.

"For instance, out of 1,000 public companies in the USA, with at least $1 billion in
annual revenue, there are only 30 female CEOs. In the UK's FTSE 100 list, there
are just three."

25

GLASS CEILING

Shikha Sharma

Shikha Sharma heads Axis Bank. Shikha Sharma worked with the ICICI group
for 28 years. Sharma is credited for the bank's growth in personal financial
services.
"Amongst private and foreign banks, women almost outnumber men. This has
been helped in no mean measure by women from ICICI Bank who have joined
other financial institutions in recent times," said EMA Partners managing
partner K Sudarshan.
.

Chanda Kochar

The financial services sector is dominated by women in India. As many
as 54 per cent of the women CEOs are, according to EMA Partners, in financial
services. Chanda Kochhar is among the leading women in India's financial services
sector. She took over as managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank from May 1,
2009. According to Chanda Kochhar Head of India’s largest public sector bank
with 10,000 plus employees now a days companies are considering merit and not
be biased to any gender and women should not expect to be treated differently in
any field.

26

GLASS CEILING

Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw
Eleven per cent of the Indian women CEOs are in the media and another 11 per
cent in pharmaceuticals. Thus, Kiran Mazumdar-Shaw is the chairman and
managing director one of the largest pharmaceutical company in India she also
reached in the lime light of corporate world when she decided to fill majority of
the vacancy in the organization with women’s.

IndraNooyi
Indra Nooyi is the newly appointed CEO of PepsiCo-the world's second-largest
soft drink maker. She joins the select band of women who head Fortune 500
companies. Presently, there are only 10 Fortune 500 companies that are run by
women, and Indra Nooyi is the 11th to break into the top echelons of power.
Prior to becoming CEO, Indra Nooyi was President, Chief Financial Officer and
a member of the Board of Directors of PepsiCo Inc.

27

GLASS CEILING

Rajshree Pathy
Manufacturing has traditionally not attracted too many women because of the
nature of the business and the location of factories in the interiors. Thirty-five
per cent of the women CEOs, according to EMA Partners, are also promoters of
their companies.

This includes Rajshree Pathy who runs Rajshree Sugars & Chemicals and
Meher Pudumjee who is the chairperson of Thermax.

Meera Sanyal

Meera Sanyal was appointed as CEO of ABN Amro Bank in December 2007.

28

GLASS CEILING

Sanyal was working as corporate executive vice president and head of services
(Asia) of ABN Amro. She was earlier the chief operating officer of the bank.

In Germany, just over 10 per cent of board members are women, according to
EMA Partners. In France, it is as low as 7 per cent.

To address this imbalance, some countries have insisted on minimum levels of
board female members. Norway, in 2004, inaugurated a quota system
stipulating that 40 per cent of the board of a publicly quoted company should be
women otherwise that company could be delisted. In 2007, Spain decided to go
the same way. The Royal Bank of Scotland took over ABN's assets globally,
including in India, early this year.

Barkha Dutt
Barkha Dutt is an Indian TV journalist and columnist. She is currently Group
Editor, English News at New Delhi Television(NDTV)

Dutt gained prominence for her reportage of the Kargil War. She has won
many national and international awards, including the Padma Shri, India's fourth
highest civilian honour. She writes a popular column for The Hindustan Times,
called "Third Eye."However, she has also come in for criticism that her
reporting is sensationalist and melodramatic.

29

GLASS CEILING

30

GLASS CEILING

KUMARI MAYAVATI

Kumari Mayawati is the current chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh India's most
populous state. Her supporters refer to her as Behen Ji, which means sister. At the
age of 39, the unmarried Mayawati was the youngest politician to become the chief
minister in Uttar Pradesh. As the first Dalit woman chief minister of any Indian
state after centuries of oppression by the Hindu upper castes kumari Mayawati is an
icon for millions of India’s Dalits she also known as the Dalit Ki Beti which means
Daughter of Dalit.

CONCLUSION

Thus, taking into account all above mentioned points, it is possible to conclude that
nowadays the glass ceiling syndrome is still a serious problem. In fact, the position
of women has not changed or improved substantially. In stark contrast, the life at
the top is still white and male and the arguments in favor of the existence of equal
opportunities for men and women seem to be not very convincing. At least
statistics perfectly illustrates that women are not only underrepresented at the top
positions, but they are also often discriminated and are not considered to be
potentially prospective workers. As a result, the current leaders prefer to develop
men as future leaders instead of developing women whose potential may be equal
or even higher than that of some men that occupy high positions. Obviously, such a

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GLASS CEILING

situation cannot remain unchanged and the problem of the glass ceiling still has to
be solved in such a way that women can get a real opportunity to fully realize their
potential and become leaders.

However, to end this paper on a more optimistic note we may do well to remember
the words of Russel Madden who said, “Those who complain about glass ceilings
should keep in mind that glass can be shattered if one strikes it hard enough, and
long enough”. Hence, the women need to take up the reality of glass ceiling as a
challenge to be overcome and men as an occasion to rise to the occasion by making
way for the talented and deserving women rather than blocking their path for equal
opportunities for advancement.

REFERENCES

1. Andrica, Diane. (1997). “The Glass Ceiling: Are you Affected?” Nursing
Economics.

2. Castro, Ida L., Furchtgott-Roth, Diana. (1997). “Should Women be Worried
About the Glass Ceiling in the Workplace?” Insight on the News. v13 n5 p24.

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GLASS CEILING

3. Feldman, Gayle. (1997). “Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Women Have Had a Long
Hard Struggle to Reach Their Current Stutus in the Industry”. Publishers Weekly.
v244 n31 p82.

4. Himelstein, Linda. (1997). “Breaking Through”. Business Week. n3514 p64.

33

A Theoretical Study on ‘Glass Ceiling Concept’

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