Women and Glass Ceiling Inequalities in Regards to Leadership, Education, and Professionalism

Women and Glass Ceiling Inequalities in Regards to Leadership, Education, and Professionalism

Table of Contents

Introduction

From the economics point of view, the glass ceiling entails the unseen, but also unbreakable barrier keeping women and other minorities from rising to the corporate ladder upper ranks, irrespective of their credentials. At the start, the metaphor was applying to barriers in the women career but was swiftly extended to imply to obstacles which hindered the advancement of minority men together with women (Poffenberger, 2001).

Definition

Cotter, & Vanneman (2001), stated four distinctiveness aspects that ought to be met so as to make the conclusion that there is the existence of a glass ceiling. An inequality of a glass ceiling is represented by:

Gender or racial inequality increasing over the course of a career.
Gender or racial inequality in the opportunities of advancement into higher levels.
Gender or racial difference, which larger at senior levels of an outcome than at junior level of an outcome.
A gender or racial difference unexplained by other characteristics relevant to the job of an employee Cotter along with his contemporaries established that glass ceiling are characteristically a phenomenon of gender. Both white and African American women are faced with glass ceiling in their careers. Contrastingly, these researchers never found glass ceiling for African American men (Moreau, & Halsall, 2005).

This metaphor of the glass ceiling has been utilized for describing unseen obstructions through which women see best positions but are unable to reach them. These barriers hinder a considerable number of women and ethnic minorities from getting the most influential employment opportunities in the job market. In addition, this barrier may make a majority of women get the feeling that they are not adequately worthy to have the prestigious positions. They similarly feel that their bosses fail to take them with keenness, or they perceive them as potential candidates (Wrigley, 2002).

The glass ceiling has continued to be there though there lacks explicit obstacles that keep women and minorities from getting superior job opportunities. There are no advertisements stating that no minorities employed in this company; these forms of discrimination are not permitted by the law, though they lie under the surface. Companies which engage in this discrimination, they hide under explanations which look conceivable for justification of their decisions. This can be done by stating that are extremely subjective or by retrospective emphasis of certain criteria giving a certain candidate an advantage. This invisible barrier is commonly seen in developing countries (Wald, 2010).

There are diverse hindrances on the women making it hard for them to attain a higher status of work. With these negative effects on women together with their self-esteem, the glass ceiling has caused a considerable challenge in and outside the workplace. A majority of people perceive glass ceiling as just been in the place of work; this is because it was intended for, but it has opened up to reach other areas. For instance, it has gotten to the household, whereby women find it hard to emerge from the household, and get a job. Some women do not feel censored in the household and some opt to be in the household where they find glass ceiling inapplicable. This term is applicable to the women that wish to be out in the field but find it hard. Since the glass ceiling limits the women opportunities in third world countries, the term has expanded and is a now a concern globally (Isaac, & Carnes, 2012).

Currently, women education participation together with outcomes has remained mixed. The overall data may appear promising; however, after their disaggregation into restraint areas and professional fields, the depiction is not appealing. The gender equity reality has not yet been attained. Data for school enrolment has changed little over time. For instance, in Australia, more females than males enrolled for the Victorian Certificate of education in 2011 while men remained predominant in the material sciences and women in the humanities. For instance, females only composed of 42% of Mathematics methods, CAS, 7% of software development and 21% of Physics enrolment, but 72% of literature, 74% of Biology and 57% of Chinese as a second language enrolment.

The VCE achievement of 2011 also discovered some persistent patterns of gender differences over time, specifically in subjects of physical sciences. There are mixed results for humanities subjects together with the other sciences. In mathematics methods, CAS, literature and Chemistry for instance, high male proportions than women attained the grades of A or A+ for the three assessments tests. On the other hand, for Chinese Second language higher female proportions than males managed to score A+ or A on all three assessed components. Virtually, there lacked gender difference in the results for software development and Biology.

In 2011, the mean starting salary for graduates with a bachelor degree in their first job showed a $2000 difference in favor of men, a consistent trend for the past decade. After disaggregation, there were fourteen occupational field which had high starting salaries for male like dentistry, medicine, law, and business. In six of these females were starting with high (veterinary science, physical science and social work) and three with equal starting salaries, for example, engineering, mathematics and education.

The figures from Australian Bureau of Statistics indicate that labor force participation of female rose from 60.2 percent to 65.3 percent over the last decade, with male rates only rising from 78.2% to 79.8%. In May 2010, the average hourly normal time earning for ladies was at 92% as compared to that of males. This had increased from 89% rate in 2007. It would predict well in the future if the enhancement in the participation of female in the workforce and higher educational professions were acknowledged as causal factors to the encouraging trend.

However, the presence of women, in the society of Australia has remained comparatively low. Though there are females holding elite political offices, overall female representation in the federal government had an increase of 2% to 28% in the last decade. For instance, in 2011, women formed three of the top 200 company’ CEOs in Australia and this was a decrease from 8% in 2003. Nonetheless, among the judges in the commonwealth judges and magistrates, the proportion of female rose from 22% in 2002 to 29% in 2011.

There is increased prejudice worldwide against women; men are being promoted at a faster rate than women with similar qualifications, even in settings which customarily are for female like education and nursing. The resistance to leadership by women is also rampant. People perceive successful women managers as been more selfish, pushy, deceitful and abrasive than flourishing male managers. Family demand also plays a part in women activities. Women have been interrupters to their careers by handling work and family tradeoffs. Since they are overloaded with many activities, they lack the time for engaging in social networking, which is useful for advancement (Haslam, & Ryan, 2008).

For a company to have more women leaders, it should put in place various measures. The companies should examine and reward the productivity of women by objective results rather than the number of hours they work. The criteria for performance evaluation should be made explicit, and design processes of evaluation to limit the influence of bias from the evaluators. Companies should avoid having only one female member in a given team. When outnumbered, men tend to ignore the female. Women demanding developmental job experiences should be given to train them for leadership positions. Widely esteemed and well placed individuals should be encouraged to mentor women (Djajadikerta, & Trireksani, 2007).

Stereotypes and gender roles work in concurrence with one another and perpetuate each other in society and the work place. Unlike the sex of an individual, which is genetic and biological, gender is acquired via interactions in the society and changes over time. As defined many, gender is a social construction. It is significantly complicated than sex. We were either born as female or male, but we learn gender via interaction with society and hence we learn the femininity and masculinity traits. Gender is a social construct varying from culture to culture, over time in a given culture, and in relation to other genders. As a result, every gender assumes its meaning by the influence of beliefs, values, and ideal ways to organize collective life.

For instance, in the American society, masculinity is recognized as being powerful, balanced, successful, determined, strong and emotionally guarded. On the other hand, femininity is linked with being nurturing, emotional, passive, courteous, physically attractive and caring in regard to relationships and fellow humans. Nonetheless, the masculinity characteristics have turned into being less inflexible and more rationalized in comparison to the earlier time periods; however, the traits of femininity have remained intact and traditional (D’Agostino, 2010).

Gender inequality is habitually entrenched within the social hierarchy, and this has effect on the way women and men are seen in the roles of leadership. Various traits are attributed to females in comparison to males that inform the process of selection with unsubstantiated bias. Females who lack other traits rather than those generated ones she is believed to possess, then she gets a negative perception. For instance, when women have expertise they are perceived as being less influential by others. Nonetheless, for men expertise is viewed positively. In addition, groups led by females are less than those led by males, even with females having expertise like the male counterparts. As a result, having expertise is not perceived as positively as it is for males. This also indicates that lack of skills, not the only thing women are perceived as being less worth in roles of leadership (Wrigley, 2002).

In conclusion, the paper shows that women are held with low esteem in most societies. This has resulted to them facing challenges to excel in various areas of life. They find it hard to excel in education, in leadership roles as well as in professionalism. The society should break away from these beliefs and create an environment that allows success for both women and men.

References

Cotter, D. & Vanneman, R. (2001). The glass ceiling effect. Social forces. Vol. 80(2); 655-682.

D’Agostino, M. (2010). Making sense of women career progression. Journal of public administration & management. Vol. 16(1); 95-115.

Djajadikerta, H. & Trireksani, T. (2007). Predictors of women academics career progression: Australia. Asian academy management journal. Vol. 12(1); 51-68.

Haslam, A. & Ryan, M. (2008). The road to the glass cliff. The leadership quarterly Vol.19; 530-546.

Isaac, C. & Carnes, M. (2012). Deconstructing the glass ceiling. Journal of sociology mind. Vol. 2(1); 80-86.

Moreau, M. & Halsall, A. (2005). The career progression of women teachers in England: a study of barriers to the promotion and career development: p13-97.

Poffenberger, C. (2001). A double standard: women leaders in public relations and corporate communications. University of Georgia: p1-89.

Wald, E. (2010). The changing professional landscape of large law firms, glass ceilings and dead ends: professional ideologies, gender stereotypes and the future of women lawyers at large law firms. Fordham law review. Vol. (78):5:2245-2288.

Wrigley, B. (2002). Glass ceiling; what glass ceiling? Journal of public relations research. Vol. 14(1): 27-55.

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