What You Need to Know About The Glass Ceiling in Women’s Rights
The glass ceiling is a metaphor for the struggles and inequality that women experience in the workplace. Here is everything you need to know about the glass ceiling in women’s rights.
The term “the glass ceiling” is one that has become very prevalent in society, yet not everyone knows what it means. The glass ceiling is a metaphor that refers to upper-level workforce opportunities that are proven to be impenetrable to the vast majority of women and minorities. The term was originally popularized in the 1980s to describe the challenges that women face when their careers stood still at middle-management roles, preventing them from achieving higher leadership opportunities. While the glass ceiling is the most commonly used phrase, there are some other important terms that one might come across when discussing the glass ceiling and women in the workforce.
The “maternal wall” is a term that refers to the blocks that pregnant women, working mothers, and women of child-bearing age experience in the workplace. Certain stereotypes related to women’s role in their family and needing to take time off after birth and for childcare often place women at a disadvantage in their careers compared to men and fathers.
The “concrete ceiling”’ is similar to the glass ceiling, but it is specific for women of color in the workplace. This term was coined in 2016 by Jasmine Babers to describe the significantly tougher hurdle women of color face in reaching elevated success in their careers.
The “glass escalator” refers to men who enter female-dominated fields and accelerate into higher positions. There has also been the idea tossed around that men enter female-dominated industries in an effort to obtain job stability, financial security, and better family benefits.
Related: Types of Workplace Discrimination in California
Statistics About Women in the Workplace
While the glass ceiling is invisible, it is also very real, and there are plenty of statistics to back up the real-life struggles that women face in the workplace. First, both male and female managers are twice as likely to hire men over women. In fact, women are 25-46% more likely to be hired with blind applications. Men are also 30% more likely to get managerial roles, with women only holding 38.6% of those roles. Women also receive 5% fewer pay raises than men, while both men and women ask for pay raises at the same rate. Additionally, at companies where 90% of leadership is men, half of the men at the company view women as being well-represented.
Related: Unequal Pay for Women in California
Mothers Who Work
Mothers in the workforce face extra challenges in the workplace every day. Fathers who work do not necessarily deal with the same challenges, which adds to the discrimination of women and the glass ceiling. Among these challenges are:
- Little or no paid family leave after giving birth or adopting a child,
- Lingering employer reticence to offer breastfeeding support or flexible schedules,
- Workplace discrimination against new parents, especially mothers, and
- Finding affordable, quality child care (especially for newborns).
Related: How to Prevent Pregnancy Discrimination in the Workplace
In addition to discrimination in the workplace, working mothers have to balance work and caregiving. Starting and a family is already hard enough when there are no other obstacles to get in one’s way.
People argue that it is okay that women get less flexibility in the workplace compared to men because their husbands have that extra flexibility to earn money while the wife is on unpaid family leave. Not only is this argument ineffective because women should have the same rights as men regardless of whether or not they have husbands who can make their situations easier, but there is also a rising prevalence in same-sex marriages and same-sex parents. If two women are attempting to start a family, they have little to no flexibility and usually, no paid family leave to begin to raise their child.
Why Is There a Glass Ceiling?
Despite women making up more than half of the United States population, women are extremely underrepresented in upper-level positions in the American workforce. Unfortunately, little progress has been made over the years to work towards gender equality in the workplace. There are a few specific factors that might contribute to this unfortunate discrimination and inequality.
Psychological
It is human nature to be attracted to others who share similar qualities, interests, and experiences. This is especially true when meeting a new person or having the chance to choose someone for an exciting opportunity. Hiring someone and reviewing resumes is one of the few times in life that one reads about and makes a decision on a stranger before actually going to meet them. For people in a position of power and authority, working with someone they believe to have a connection with and will work well with is enough for them to promote someone. Therefore, it makes sense psychologically that if white, cisgender men are predominately in positions of power, that they would choose other cisgender white men when it comes to hiring and promoting, as those individuals already have similar experiences to those in power.
Gender Roles and Gender Bias
Gender roles are social constructs unique to different cultures that are assigned to individuals the moment their sex is identified. From this point on, most individuals are separated into the binary of male or female genders. While this is changing as parenting styles have changed to fit the possibility that not all children are cisgender, these roles are still very prevalent in society, later translating into academic interests and professional careers.
In American culture, girls are generally expected to be feminine and therefore polite, accommodating, and nurturing, whereas boys are expected to be masculine and therefore competitive, aggressive, and fearless. In the workplace, managers and people with power are expected to be competitive, aggressive, and fearless—the three traits that are commonly seen as masculine—in order to make strong decisions and effectively lead teams. Women are also stereotypically expected to raise children, cook, clean, run errands, and prepare dinner. These extra standards on women often make it harder to balance a career, build a family, and have a personal life of their own.
Gender bias refers to the tendency people have to prefer one gender over another. In the workplace, gender bias significantly affects women more than men. 40% of people say they notice a double standard against female candidates. Not only that, but both men and women who are hiring managers are significantly more likely to hire a man over a woman, so much so that men are 1.5 times more likely to be hired than women.
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