Glass Ceiling Effect on Women at Work Places

This article discusses the glass ceiling effect on women at work places, forms of discrimination, strategies towards empowering women in workplaces, and breaking the glass ceiling.

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Glass Ceiling Effect on Women at Work Places
Name
Institution

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Introduction
Glass ceiling effect is an invisible situation that exists to bar females and minors in
workplaces from rising to higher ranks. An inferiority complex is imposed on the
aforementioned parties thus regarding them of little or no use to greater plans in the proceedings
of the organizations in which they are instituted. This vice extends even to our current 21st
century across the globe (Cotter, Hermsen, Ovadia & Vanneman, 2001).
This term came to be used in the 1980s because of women who joined organizations’
workforce being turned down towards advancing their career to a certain degree. This in return
yielded to the unmotivated female workforce in relation to males. It was viewed that in the event
that females would conceive, they were going to take long maternal leaves thus disabling the
progress of the firm (Mancuso, 2017). For an organization to achieve its agenda, it requires a
committed and productive labor force, thus their absenteeism would halt some organizations’
plans. When they would report to work from their leave, some would leave the job completely
while others would result in low commitment in work due to their maternal obligations.
Forms of Discrimination
Sexual harassment prevails in workplace whereby it mainly affects those women who
hold positions as managers. Most organizations will only rebuke the offender and to an extreme,
he is usually fired. Rare cases exist where the offender will be fired for he is stilled perceived as
an important asset to the company based on his labour productivity. This inflicts fear on women
who play victim since no action is taken upon their offenders. Reporting only brings
embarrassment to themselves where fellow workers acquire a topic to joke about (Mancuso,
2017).

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‘Boy clubs’ also affect to a great degree the number of women getting promoted in their
career. Either many men will want to promote fellow men whom they schooled together or were
former colleagues at a lower level. A result to this is an exclusion of women from business trips
and policy formulations without considerations on their qualifications and abilities (Cotter,
Hermsen, Ovadia & Vanneman, 2001).
Job segregation occurs whereby some jobs are regarded manly while others feminine. A
job like secretarial is often advocated for women whereby people don’t want to hire men for the
same. Females will consider these ‘womanly’ jobs rather than secure a slightly higher caliber job
since they wouldn’t be acquired leadership positions due to their gender (Newman, 2016).
There exist no regulations by the Supreme Court that may adamantly protect women
from discrimination (Casadevall, 2015). Women’s cases of harassment and discrimination are
usually not taken seriously by their superiors who are men. These superiors view these
complaints as of lesser weight compared to how women present them. Some even go to an extent
of defending the offenders hence creating a scenario where women tend to be wasting their
breath.
Discrimination may also occur whereby other people may be paid higher salaries than
their counterparts concerning gender may or disability may (Dreher, 2003). People who are
disabled tend to be viewed as unproductive, which acts a clouded judgment.
Strategies towards Empowering Women in Workplaces
Implementation of Flexible Family Care Spending.

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Grant-making institutions allow their grantees to spend some of their grant money to
finance for eldercare, childcare or other expenses related to their families so as to encourage
traveling to give lectures or even attend conferences and scientific meetings. This policy is
gender-neutral and it encourages corresponding grantees a chance to attend courses and
conferences, which are essential to the advancement of their career. The IWISE Working Group
avows the existence of significant legal and administrative challenges towards implementation of
the aforementioned spending. For instance, complications for institutions and investigators must
be considered by organizations in relation to laws on income taxes. Regardless of this negativity,
they believe that the benefits associated with this flexible spending outmatch its cost of adoption.
They thus encourage funders in biomedical research to avail childcare spending within the award
budgets of their grantees (Johnson, Smith & Wang, 2017).
Recruit Gender Balanced Committees
When considering symposia, conveners and funders should adopt recruitment policies
upon selecting a committee which is gender balanced. According to Casadevall 2015, there
exists a correlation between a high proportion of participants invited who are females and the
presence of at least a woman on scientific Symposium’s speaker selection committee.
Withdrawal by a female from the committee should require her to recommending three females
able to do reviews according to IWISE. They further postulate that a committee should comprise
of 20% females. The women indeed happen to be more committed to this task.
Incorporation of Implicit Bias Statements.
In accordance with previous studies, gender biasedness have been found to exist
throughout the society especially in the field of science (Mahr, Hayes, Shanafelt, Sloan & Erie,

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2017). In order to curb the negative impact of prejudices, unconscious attitude and biasedness,
developers of the grants should incorporate into their external review processes program the
implicit bias statements. These implicit statements outline the bias to the reviewers for reiteration
on the commitment to gender equality by the institution where women should be treated as
equals to men.
Creation of New Opportunities.
In the case of businesses changes, companies should not just wait for male employees to
come and fill into the new task. Women who have inspiration on leadership should be
incorporated into the system. Given the example of assigning a new director, the organization
should increase the number of women seats in the board rather than wait for a man to step down
from the board of directors of the company to assign a woman (Belasen, 2017).
Encouraging Sponsorships and Mentorships.
Companies should encourage all its employees, including women, to find sponsors and
mentors who provide them with inspiration towards the advancement of their careers. Mentors
will help them contemplate on their career development while sponsors actualize their ideas
(Klein, Voskuhl, Segal, Dittel, Lane, Bethea & Piccio, 2017).
Provide a Network of Support.
Organizations should encompass boards to advise women on an enhancement of their
career opportunities and entertain both local and national approaches that do support, retain,
advance and reward women. This is an effective method to empowering women and challenging

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them to produce more and effective results in their various fields at their workplace (Belasen,
2017).
Measurement of Progress. This aspect entails the evaluation of the productivity of the
labour force as a whole. Both women and men are evaluated equally without any gender favor or
bias. Companies can consider attributes like attrition, talent acquisition, leadership and career
progression. Awarding those with high productivity, a promotion not only brings about equity
but also benefits the output of the firm at large (Shafiq, 2014).
Advocate for Others
Belasen 2017, argued that female leaders should be vigilant in supporting their fellow
women in the workplace. Advocating for others creates a conducive environment whereby views
and ideas of all employees are listened to in equivalence. Personal advocacy would mean
selfishness and violation of the female gender norms whereas considering others is a sense of
being nursing and helpful.
The breaking of the Glass Ceiling
A report submitted by Fortune Magazine dated July 2014 established that there were 51
women CEOs employed in Fortune 1000 companies whereby out of the 51, twenty-four were
heads to 500 top companies (Bertrand, Black, Jensen & Muney, 2014). Despite these figures
seeming worthless, it remains to be quite encouraging to see women stepping up to managerial
levels. This trend is an evidence of Glass Ceiling effect but the 5% remains to be an encouraging
figure towards breaking of this glass ceiling. The study further discovered that these companies
generated a 7% of the total profits of the Fortune 1000 companies. Examples of these companies

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ran by women are Home Shopping Network, Xerox, and General Motors. The fact that less than
a half of these women hold MBAs makes the actualization of being a female CEO achievable. It
follows that a great number of women in these Fortune 1000 companies are married mothers thus
bringing a picture that women can balance their career and family. They are therefore not open to
bias and discrimination (Galam, 2017).
An Example of Glass Ceiling in Politics
Hillary Clinton advocated for the breaking of glass ceiling in women during her
campaign in 2016 to become president. Her official nomination made history in that she became
the first woman to vie for the presidency in the United States of America. This nominated paved
a path to be followed by women in future assuring them of the possibility of being elected
president. As she served as the first lady to her husband in 1995, an event occurred where
Walmart banned a t-shirt that showed a character Margaret from Dennis the Menace animated
series claiming “Someday a woman will be president!” in regard that family values were being
violated. What resulted in the incidence was complaints that led them to order and selling thirty
thousand shirts globally with the same sticker (Cicci, 2015).
Conclusion
Overall, breakage of Glass Ceiling will come from personal efforts of all female
employees. Just as their male coworkers, they should be vigilant to a similar proportion (or even
more) for them to be treated with equality. They should consider taking an extra assignment,
which will improve their job credibility. Being part of the managerial network creates a
responsible attitude such that considerations for promotion become possible. Working in a

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female-owned company exposes one to some grant programs, which are beneficial to women in
particular.

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References
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