Glass Ceiling and Sticky Floor - Assignment Example

GLASS CEILING AND STICKY FLOOR 16TH DECEMBER, 2008 Discuss what it meant by the 'glass ceiling' and 'sticky floor'. How are these organizational barriers produced and what measures might help to overcome them? INTRODUCTION Years of research continue to prop up the theory of ‘glass ceiling’ and ‘stick floor’. The current leadership trends support the view that this ought to be the decade of the women leader, more than one-third of the Fortune 500 companies are led by women managers (Shambaugh R, 2007). Not only this , women take a lead as far as literacy and holding degrees are concerned, they are found holding respectable elected positions but still women in the actual sense are far behind in the lead. They hold only 14.5 percent of the top cadre positions in the Fortune 500 companies. This entire state where women are undercasted and prevented by the other communities especially men to rise up at the top most levels is nothing but the ‘Glass Ceiling’ concept. According to the US Department of Labour, “Glass Ceiling is those artificial barriers based on attitudinal or organizational bias that prevents qualified individuals from advancing upwards in the organization”. (David E M, Woodward D, 1998). However many eminent theorists have started believing that the phase of Glass ceiling is gradually converting into sticky floor which means helping organizations transform capable women with leadership potentials into senior-level leadership positions. The glass ceiling is referred to with the specific name as "ceiling" is a constraint that blocks up the upward advancement, and "glass" due to its transparency factor as its not immediately visible and such barriers are unwritten and unofficial . the most suffered segment is the female workforce as they are supposed to be not worthy of acquiring high ranking positions as the bosses do not taken women seriously or actually see them as potential candidates. Gender-earnings differences are much more than the only fact which says that men on the whole earn more than women. Glass ceiling indicates the wages earned by the women whether conditional on covariates that fall drastically behind men’s more at the top of the wage distribution than at the middle or bottom. Sticky floor on the other hand broadens up the gender pay gap significantly at the bottom or the conditional level of the wage distribution. Few of the important features highlighted for such sticky floor applications by Shambaugh R, (2007) are ‘Balancing work life’, ‘embracing good enough’, ‘Making the break’, ‘making your words count’ etc. in simple words, sticky floor is a concept which exhibits that a majority of working women about 55 million in number are still bearing the brunt of low paying occupations, unable to forge ahead and climb up the job ladder (Headlee E S, Elfin M, 1996). The top five jobs which land in the domain of women include job of secretary, cashier, nurse, manager and bookkeeper, out of which two of them are of clerical nature which does not pay well and constitute a major portion of the total women labour force (Headlee E S, Elfin M, 1996). According to Ryan K M, Haslam A S, 2007 , women are best equipped to deal with the socio-emotional challenges that (potential) crises present while men are not suited to these challenges on the other hand that men are best equipped to deal with the task demands of success while women are “not up to” such tasks . EVALUATION Women face the twin organizational barrier of ‘glass ceiling’ and ‘sticky floor’ , the sticky floor traps women at the lowest wage levels with little opportunities to move ahead while glass ceiling includes the concept of attitudinal biasness and is a transparent organizational barrier that restrains women from rising beyond a certain level in corporations (Kimmel S M, 2000). There are infinite examples which can be quoted to introspect on the past events and judge the role of women in varied field, for instance in politics women have been excluded though in current times, the number have been steadily growing yet to less to comprehend. After the phase of industrial revolution , a strong core of the progressive eras was followed, one based on cultural politics of men and other based on women’s values such as safety, hours of work, child labour etc. But what was counted in the rapidly industrializing America was the power of money due to which most of the women were excluded from the politics (Headlee E S, Elfin M, 1996). In a court case various examples of gender stereotyping against women have been stated. Eight women sued against Publix Super Market against various allegations of denied promotions, holding supervisory positions etc. Business Week conducted a survey for 3,664 business schools and found that a woman possessing an MBA degree was earning an average of $54, 749 in her first year after graduation in comparison to man who earned $61,400 under the similar scenarios. This gap was even more widened with the progressive years of education. Out of the 4,012 highest paid US directors, CEO and other official posts in USA only nineteen were women (Kimmel S M, 2000) There may be numerous reasons for such disparity and barriers within organizations, hesitation or unwillingness to incorporate restructured management policies to promote workplace diversity, inadequate or incompetent job evaluation criteria, gender stereotyping etc can be few of the factors responsible for gender biasness. Women still continue to be underrepresented in the leadership positions as they are regarded to be the cause of failure “Lack of success is seen as women’s fault” (Liff S, Ward K, 2001). There journey towards the senior leadership positions has been full of daunting and challenging obstacles. As women managers have to face a large amount of criticism than men, implicit theories of gender and leadership have been established, for instance Think Manager- Think Male theory has been clearly reflected in the US, China, Japan and company other countries strategy (Ryan K M, Haslam A S, 2007). This theory supports the view that women are less competent and less behavior friendly to portray leadership roles. The perceived relationship between male and managerial position is supposed to be durable and global (Deal J, 1998: Eagly A H, 2005: Schein V E, 2001) which still persists in the modern day organizational culture Earlier it was regarded that women lack the necessary traits for leadership, but now thinking has taken a drastic change, American gurus suggest that if women is more determined and sincere can certainly attain success (Morrison A, 1992, White J, 1992). In one of the studies undertaken , the expectations of those candidates working in the UK high street bank who had still not reached the senior level was examined. On the whole, it was found that management was male dominated, equality statements were conflicting, senior manger was supposed to be super human taking enormous workloads to which women were quite uncomfortable and senior management did not regard them to be the right choice for such a position. Negative comments about women who had already been promoted was passed, balance between family and work commitment was taken as a factor of incompatibility towards the senior level job. Even the rising trends cannot deny the fact that women’s uncertainty about their career advancements is something what they have been led to believe about the high status jobs. There are several issues which a women needs to cater to and such issues need to be embedded within the framework of organizational culture and the negotiation of careers (Liff S, Ward K, 2001). In a research paper by Ryan K M, Haslam A S, Postmes T, 2007, the phenomenon of the glass cliff was dealt with. The different reactions posed by men’s and women’s were examined. To identify the essence of disproportional women’s participation in the upper echelons of management, 164 individuals were selected out of which 129 were females and 31 were males. Participants were made to read an online story about the glass cliff phenomenon and indicated their attitudes on a seven point scale system. Various factors for the sexual discrimination were explored such as Sexism, In-group favoritism, expendability and scapegoating, lack of opportunities, lack of network and support, gender stereotypes etc. The results of the study clearly indicated that there are gender differences in men’s and women’s attitude towards the glass ceiling and the sticky floor concepts. Women largely supported the fact that glass cliff existence is a barrier for their progress in the organization and still think that it to be a threat and signs of unfairness in the prevalence organizational culture on the contrary men completely zapped by the validity of such research. On the whole no common generalizations could be made on the subject but the prevalence of glass ceilings in the modern world could be confirmed to a large extent. Many studies also support the fact in the current times women have begun to breakthrough the glass ceilings that earlier restricted them from moving up the dominant positions. Negative judgments have been passed against women in the Britain court where the females have been outrightly asked to be off board due to the poor performance of the companies but it has been criticized that the measure adopted by the judge for scrutiny were broad and loosely defined, moreover no market fluctuations were taken into consideration. To delve deeper into the judgmental view, the current study was undertaken by Ryan K M, Haslam A S (2005) where the share price performance of the FTSE 100 companies was investigated. The 2003, Cranfield index was taken as a support tool. Two main conditions were tested firstly, one proposed by Judge (2003) – ‘that women leaders were responsible for poor performance’ and secondly ‘that woman are appointed in conditions of relatively poor company performance’. To identify the relationship between women in leadership and company performance, correlation analysis was conducted to which the first condition in accordance with the Judge’s (2003) claims, revealed that there existed a marginally significant negative correlation between the percentage of women in leadership positions and performance against the changes in the market share price , further it was also revealed that there was no remarkable difference in company performance in 2003 irrespective of a male leader or a female leader. The study revealed some interesting appointment patterns, companies which appointed men as a part of their boards of directors found the company performance to be stable both prior and post appointments periods , regardless of the time of year that the appointment was made and state of the stock market but for companies that preferred women on their decision making panel found that in times of a general financial downturn in the stock market, companies suffered a downward trend in performance prior to the appointment but on the contrary when the stock market was more stable, companies that appointed a woman had an upward but unstable performance graph. On the whole, it could be analyzed that it is the perception of the general public that decides the share pricing in a short span and not the actual ability of the member appointed, women’s are closely evaluated and criticized in comparison to men and wrongly interpreted as well. They constitute the minority on the board which again influences the perception of the colleagues, the public and the staff by large (Ryan K M, Haslam A S, 2005) Another survey conducted to analyze the factors that constitute glass ceiling. 600 candidates were surveyed who had already made to the top in mainly six countries Australia, Austria, Germany, the Philippines, Switzerland and the United Kingdom. Factors such as Individual, Society and Company were taken into consideration and respondents were asked to rate each of these factors and their sub factors in terms of its importance in their career success. The key findings of the survey related to the fact that now gender is no longer a reason to be a career-limiting factor, internal support mechanisms are not customized to meet women’s individual needs, female executives in specific believed that organizations are doing a better job than society in general to promote equality (Accenture, retrieved on 16th December, 2008). CONCLUSION In the end it can be very well analyzed that new cracks are being constantly observed in the glass ceilings and sticky flooring in almost all organizations. The organizational barriers and changes related to them must take into account all the possible issues. It is high time that women’s must be encouraged to move towards the managerial positions and discriminatory practices must be eliminated. Organizations must incorporate such changes for the betterment and future growth (Shambaugh R, 2007). The glass ceiling effect or the sticky floor concept is been derived from the traditional gender biases which have been cultivated in the minds of people since decades back. The old traditional concept still prevails whereby men are considered to be the main earners of the family and the women are regarded as the homemakers, this concept is still embedded in the modern minds. Women generally prefer to choose such careers that give them ample time to take care of domestic chores and balance their personal and professional lives due to which they end up with jobs that are less financial return oriented in comparison to jobs chosen by men. Continual literacy and education awareness has urged women like Indra Nooyi and Kiran Shah Mazumdar (Glass Ceiling Effect, 2008) to come on the forefront but still in the long run it’s too much more too is achieved and lots more remaining in the pipeline to minimize the effect of the organizational barriers of glass ceiling and sticky floor to the least if not eradicated. REFERENCES THE ANTOMY OF GLASS CEILING, BARRIERS TO WOMEN’S PROFESSIONAL ADVANCEMENT, ACCENTURE, retrieved on 16th December, 2008, http://www.accenture.com/NR/rdonlyres/9A504280-5296-43E5-B197-AE1FC48866F3/0/glass_ceiling.pdf David E M, Woodward D, 1998, Negotiating the Glass Ceiling: Careers of Senior Women in the Academic World, Published by Routledge. Eagly, A. H. 2005. Has the managerial stereotype become less masculine and more feminine? A meta-analysis. Paperpresented at the 14th General Meeting of the European Association of Experimental Social Psychology, Wurzburg Headlee E S, Elfin M, 1996, The Cost of Being Female: Published by Greenwood Publishing Group Kimmel S M, 2000, The Gendered Society, Published by Oxford University Press US. Deal, J. J. 1998. Perceptions of female and male managers in the 1990s: Plus c¸a change. . . . Sex Roles, 38: 287–30 Liff S, Ward K, 2001, Distorted views through the glass ceilings: the construction of women’s understandings of promotion and senior management positions. Gender, work and organization, Vol 8 (1). Morrison A. 1992. Breaking the glass ceiling: Can women reach the top of America’s largest corporations? Reading MA: Addison –Wesley Ryan K M, Haslam A S, 2007, The glass cliff: exploring the dynamics surrounding the appointment of women to precarious leadership positions. _ Academy of Management Review, Vol. 32, No. 2, 549–572 Ryan K M, Haslam A S . 2005. The glass cliff: evidence that women are over-represented in precarious leadership positions. British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 81–90 . Ryan K M, Haslam A S, Postmes T. 2007. Gender differences in the explanations for the precariousness of women's leadership positions. Journal of Organizational Change Management, Volume 20 ( 2). 182-197 Schein, V. E. 2001. A global look at psychological barriers to women’s progress in management. Journal of Social Issues, 57: 675–688. Shamaugh R, 2007, It's Not a Glass Ceiling, It's a Sticky Floor: Free Yourself from the Hidden Behaviors Sabotaging Your Career Success, Published by McGraw-Hill Professional. White J. 1992. A few good women: Breaking the barriers to top management. London, Prentice Hall Glass Ceiling Effect, 5th December, 2008, retrieved on 17th December, 2008, http://www.ayushveda.com/magazine/glass-ceiling-effect/ Read More