According to the Engelian myth, women's emancipation and empowerment are achieved by incorporating them into the paid workforce. The Engelian myth mentioned by Pearson brought me back to my memory about the glass ceiling.
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| The photo was taken from the DW AKADEMIE web page. |
I first heard the term "glass ceiling" while attending a business administration thesis defense at my college. The speaker argued that most women in X company are not getting promotions or being placed in top management positions because of the glass ceiling effect.
This
term is used to explain the blocked promotional opportunities for women due to
their gender identification (Espinosa & Ferreira, 2022), so even though
this is not visible this upper obstacle, it does not mean that it does not
exist. In simple words, every time a woman can get a promotion because of their
work abilities, she is more likely not to get the promotion because "invisible"
factors impede her from getting it. Examples of these factors are assumptions
that women's work is less valuable than men's and therefore cheaper or the idea
that women cannot handle a leadership role in companies because women are seen
as emotional beings, weak, and unreliable in making decisions.
The
glass ceiling effect helps to explain how differences in wage or promotion, not
based on differences in productivity, can be maintained in the labor market,
even now when it is mentioned in the mainstream media how women are being
incorporated into the paid workforce.
According
to Espinosa (Espinosa & Ferreira, 2022), underlying assumptions of the
ability of capacity of a worker regardless of their gender identity affects and
reinforce the glass ceiling effect. In other words, this effect reinforces
women's lack of confidence in realizing specific duties and feelings of not
being competent enough to develop certain tasks. These consequences run in the
long term and vary depending on the willingness to compete for promotion.
I
decided to bring this term to the blog to shed light on the complexity of
social constructions. Also, it reminds us that our systems of beliefs are not
secluded from our experiences as social beings. Even when we rationalize these
beliefs' origin, they can interfere with our feelings, emotions, assumptions,
and decisions as women in professional and personal spaces.
References:
María Paz Espinosa & Eva Ferreira
(2022) Gender implicit bias and glass ceiling effects, Journal of Applied
Economics, 25:1, 37-57, DOI: 10.1080/15140326.2021.2007723
Pearson, Ruth. 2007. “Reassessing Paid
Work and Women’s Empowerment: Lessons from the Global Economy.” Pp. 201-213 in
Feminisms in Development: Contradictions, Contestations, and Challenges edited
by Andrea Cornwall, Elizabeth Harrison, and Ann Whitehead. New York: Zed Books.
Hi Maria, thank you for sharing these thoughts on the glass ceiling. I appreciate your note regarding the underlying stigma of women as less competent and emotional in the workplace. While gender studies efforts have moved toward social constructionism, another unavoidable aspect of (cis)women's disadvantage in the workplace comes from their biological functions. In the U.S., it is illegal to ask women if they plan to have kids in a job interview, rightfully so. However, there is this misogynistic assumption that because of the female body's child-bearing potential, she is less reliable as a laborer, feeding into the discourses of tangible and emotional capabilities.
ReplyDeleteOddly enough, while glass ceilings do exist, women in the workforce are met with a double bind: do we reify the stereotype, or do we become the "bitch" by defying the stereotype. In addition, especially in higher ed, there is a disparity between emotional labor (i.e. as an female instructor I regularly have students disclose emotions, difficulties, etc to me seeking emotional support and guidance, whereas my male peers often do not experience this labor at the same rate of other female peers). I have no doubt this emotional labor exists in other workforces, but is often invisible to the structures of power that may affirm barriers to advancement, like the glass ceiling comes to represent.
Really good thoughts! JWB
Thank Maria for sharing this topic. I enjoy reading your post. I agree with your post, and I believe when every workplace if there is "glass ceiling" against women, the employers could not fully maximize the resources their staffs. As you mentioned it could affect women, the desire and encouragement to improve skills.
ReplyDeleteThanks, Maria, for this insightful post! I have come across the glass ceiling phenomenon once, but your post gives a clearer picture of what the concept actually means. Your post makes me wonder if there will ever be a time where we can overcome the glass ceiling. This concept significantly cuts across all economic and social sectors and there has not been much amendment to improve the promotional opportunities of women within these sectors. Irrespective of how today, there has been a demand for the visibility and empowerment of women, this issue of glass ceiling continue to persist and linger covertly. Women have to work twice as hard as men; women have to be over-qualified; and women must defy the normative gender norms of being weak and passive to be considered for any promotion or occupational reward. This concept of glass ceiling evidently stems from the implications of the assigned roles for both men and women and the structure of society. It is highly problematic, and I hope someday this issue of glass ceiling will be a concept of the past, hopefully, due to a progressive change in the structure and system of the economic sector.
ReplyDeleteI really love this post and I am definitely going to read more on the phenomenon.
Thanks for this post Maria, I wrote about the same issue in the Indian context in my last post. As I was reading your post, I realized, so many of women's issues across nations are common. Being a working woman from India, who has worked in both corporate and NGO sector, I have realized that the mindsets about women's labor is so skewed across countries. The glass ceiling effect has been lingering in the Indian society for the longest time. In the recent years, there have been several pending cases at the supreme court of India, regarding women contesting with large multinationals and even public sector to get their promotions. I read a case of the Indian Navy in the year 2017, where women broke the glass ceiling and were recruited as Naval aviators, a position that was only open for men, even though we are living the post-feminist era. The question still remains, whether it will always continue to be this way, where through years of feminist struggles, women would still continue to be subjugated at multiple levels, and will have to fight for their rights? It seems like oppression keeps shifting for women, at one point it was the voting rights, now its the equal pay.
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