Glass Ceiling Thesis

Today in 2015, women are getting careers they could only dream about in the early 1900s and before. There are more doctors, professors, writers, dentists, lawyers, than ever. However, women are still misrepresented in areas such as Congress and the top positions in the business world, such as CEO’s, board members, and executives. While the movement for women has been a long battle, the battle is far from over. Diversity is necessary and will be necessary for years to come. Therefore, the equality of women in the workplace is just as

Over the last 55 years, the number of women in the workplace has steadily increased to nearly the same number of men. Additionally, jobs that women hold have expanded into roles that were once male-dominated, such as business professionals, doctors, lawyers, etc., and some women have even broken through the Glass Ceiling into senior management and executive roles. However, in spite of various laws and regulations that are in place to protect women in the workplace, women continue to experience various forms of inequality, including unequal pay, fewer job advancement and training opportunities, and stereotyping and workplace harassment.

This is probably due to our general perception towards men and women based on their genders. I do not see this happening as much as it used to be when men are given first hand opportunities to become managers or directors. Women are now holding positions in the workplace. Although, there have been positive changes in the workplace when women start getting the higher management positions, they are still underrepresented in organizations. There are few women in top leadership positions and many women quit from their jobs when they see that there are no opportunities for advancement. Promotion is one of the obstacles that women are faced with. Too often, the top positions are reserved for men. Aside from that, women confront a wage gap problem too. Men and women with similar education, training experience and position receive different pay (Petersen and Morgan

In America, we have this thought that all people should be able to pick themselves out of poverty and despair if they work hard enough. As reasonable as this sounds on its own, the reality is much different. Those people who advocate for the above, more often than not, fail to take into account the stress and desolation that being in poverty forces upon you. Now, the gender pay gap is not crushingly depressing, but it is rather disheartening and fails to live up to another ideal of our Founders. Women cannot achieve social mobility when they lack the basic means to raise themselves up, money. So as long as women are receiving less money than their male counterparts in a myriad of jobs, they will be unable to attain true progress in moving up the socio-economic ladder. The gender pay gap, comparatively speaking to other social issues, is not such a difficult problem to fix, but it will require some real, sincere legislative effort on the part of our lawmakers and

Some people live their lives by going through the motions day after day. Some people may slowly realize that the world has changed when they see their kids, and their kids have completely different thoughts and habits than they did when they were at that same age. Many people have observed how the world has changed and how it is continually changing, for better or for worse. The article, “Our Revolution Has Just Begun,” by Gloria Steinem illustrates some examples of this. From this article, she addresses two important myths regarding feminism that still apply to society today. Along with these myths, Steinem included several key examples of how feminism still has a long way to go until complete equality is

Gender equality: the pinnacle concept that American society is not-so desperately trying to achieve. Many Americans have convinced themselves that gender equality was remedied by the Nineteenth Amendment and the Second Feminist Movement, and have not considered the thousands of steps that are left on the journey. In recent years, a matter of public interest has been the gender wage gap, stating that women are earning significantly less money than men for doing an equivalent amount of work. Critics of the effort to “break the glass ceiling” claim that a pay gap does not exist, and that if it does, it is because women either do not work as hard, have to tend to their families, or hold lower paying jobs. However, the gender pay gap has been proven to exist in a variety of different forms,

Looking at the modern office there are many “glass ceilings” that Steele refers to not only apply to minorities but to genders in general. Some bosses may stop people from being promoted because they are intimidated by women and do not think they should be placed on the same level as themselves, even though they are equally qualified for the position. Steele also talks about how a misused privileged can turn out to be a disadvantage such as the concept of welfare, because people use it to their advantage so much that it become a crutch for the rest of their lives. Wiley addresses a more individual process of failing to meet educational standards hence; “You get ballplayers who could barely form a compound sentence to keep a dog off them.” This statement is still true to this day due to the fact that so many people get accepted on full ride sports scholarships but their academics are below par, so that if something happens that keeps them from competing in sports they can not afford to stay in college nor can they keep their grades

Institutional racism is inevitable in the United States. Institutional racism is constantly occurring, whether it be in the work force, schools, or the criminal justice system. The color of one’s skin is a determining factor for his success in a company, and whether or not he ends up in the court systems, and for how long.

Glass ceiling. The term "glass ceiling" is generally used to refer to instances where women and minorities have progressed within an organization, but despite their ambitions and qualifications, find it difficult to make the movement into key higher level management positions, or management positions at all. The social disadvantage these glass ceilings is the inability of the most qualified employees to move into the most important positions due to irrelevant criteria such as race or gender (U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, 2006).

Olsson shows how difficult it is to get promoted in Walmart, which contributes to her argument that Walmart does not treat their employees as they should. In addition, it shows why employees can’t have better lives because they make minimum wages for a long period, and work extra hours without getting paid for it. Olsson suggests, “he asked for a promotion, but three months later he was still doing the extra work for no extra pay” (6). Olsson’s point is that Walmart employees can’t get promoted even when they try, instead Walmart is using them and make them work harder. Increasingly during her article Olsson makes it clear that Walmart exploits their employees. Furthermore, Olsson presents us with another alarming fact that show that not only it is almost impossible to get promoted in Walmart, it is more difficult to get promoted if the employee is a female. According to Olsson, “Wal-Mart today has the same percentage of women in management that the average company had in 1975” (5). In other words, the percentage of women in management did not change from 1975, when women weren’t equal in a work atmosphere as they today. Olsson provides statistic that improves her argument and reveals Walmart unfairness.

Woman and men differ in many ways both biologically and physically and this used to be a reason many used to make discrimination against woman acceptable, however this has been contested and has been pointed out that even though men and woman have significant biological differences its society’s decision to give gender defined roles that has caused the divisions. (Ann, Oakley. Sex, Gender and Society, 1972.) The idea that men are more masculine so they should be the ones to go to school and get a good job compared to women who should stay at home with the children may seem like a story from years ago, this still occurs in Scotland today. Though girls today statistically out perform boys in education, this development doesn’t transfer into the work place. This then introduces the concept of the glass ceiling ( Gay Bryant, Adweek,1984) which deals with the concept that there is an invisible boundary preventing woman from working up the career ladder. Woman too

In an organization, the hierarchy usually consists of a singular or group of power at the top with subsequent levels of power beneath them. This is the commonly used way of delegating staff or members of the organization in most organizations. Corporations, governments, and religious organizations are hierarchical organizations with different levels of management, power and authority. The workplace has sometimes been referred to as an inhospitable place for women due to the multiple forms of gender inequalities present (Abrams, 1991). Some examples of how workplace discrimination negatively affects women’s earnings and opportunities are the gender wage gap (Peterson and Morgan, 1995), the scarcity of women in leadership (Eagly and Carli, 2007), and the longer time required for women compared to men to advance in their careers (Blau and DeVaro, 2007). In other words, workplace discrimination contributes to women’s lower socio-economic status which hence lead to women having to settle for low payed jobs or having the secretory-boss kind of relationship in order to be promoted.

In the second decade of the 21st century, the few women that make it to the top as still seen as “the exception” and according to research this is a “pipeline problem”. Overall, women form a significant part of the labour force, but the pipeline breaks somewhere between middle management and the c-suite (the top executives). This break in the pipeline is caused by various issues including organizations failing to recognize and identify their own glass ceilings and developing appropriate solutions that not only destroy the glass ceiling but also rectify their leadership pipelines. Most importantly, the presence of high-status female managers has a huge impact on gender inequality in the workplace, women in positions of authority get to make decisions on issues including gender pay gap and diversified hiring practices. However, this break in the pipeline limits women’s access to leadership positions and “employees just don’t see enough women in leadership positions at their companies” (Coffman,

The Glass Ceiling Commission discovered societal, structural, and governmental barriers all blocked women and minorities from reaching top management positions

Sexism towards women in the workplace also known as occupational sexism is one of the oldest form of discrimination against women. Despite increasing campaigns on gender equality and feminist movements worldwide, working women continue to fight for equality especially in white-collar setings. Though there has been profound progress through the years, working women continue to face more challenges as compared to men both in the western as well as developing countries. Studies now show that the Equal Pay Act passed in the United States in 1963 to abolish gender based salary differences is not being enforced as women continue to earn less than their male counterparts in the same field (Campos,2015). Moreover,black women have to struggle with diversity on top of inequality. The situation is worse in developing countries where progress is impeded by cultural beliefs and practices regarding women where they are asscociated more with domestic chores for example. Even with more women taking up roles in leadership, business and politics today, many more continue to face dicrimination during hiring and promotions as well as salary disparities.