Corporations And The Glass Ceiling example essay topic

In order for organizations to function members within the organization, the organization needs to work together to achieve specific goals and solve problems. Organizations will usually work in teams and each team has leaders that get the other team members on the ball to do perform different tasks. Organizations are structured in a hierarchy way. There is the top level management with the CEOs and presidents and other head people.

Then there is the middle-level management that includes department heads and managers. Finally there are the employees of the organization working hard to hopefully move up in the corporation to these higher levels. When employees move up the corporate ladder there are certain rewards they get like a higher salary and maybe more benefits such as more flextime. From the very beginning the world has been dominated by men and even more so in the workplace. Men were always the leaders and heads of everything all the way down to the family. The woman was the nurturer and she was only there to provide the man with a family and to care for the family.

Her place was never in the workplace. That was strictly for men. It wasn't until World War I where women started to enter the workforce in larger numbers and this was primarily because all the men were being sent over to fight in the war and their wives took their spots on the factory floors so that corporations could still function. There is the ever famous Rosie the Riveter poster during World War II that had the famous motto for women "We can do it". This got women out of the house and onto the factory floors where their husbands had been working until the war broke out. Of course once the war was over and men came back the women were in a since forced back into the house.

But ever since then women began to enter the workforce more and more ever year. Women were starting to realize that they can do the work just as good as men could or even better. Today women account for 45% of the paid labor force (Williams, 6). That number will continue to grow over the next couple of years until eventually women equal or even go above men in the labor force.

Although women are playing a big part in the labor market today, they are still unable to advance high up the corporate ladder like men can. There are a very few exceptions to this, but the majority of women in organizations can only usually get to a certain position within the organization and that is it. These women fall victims of what is known as the "glass ceiling". The term the "glass ceiling" was originally coined in a 1986 publication of the Wall Street Journal report on corporate women (Lockwood, 1). It is a concept or term that is used to refer to the barriers faced by minorities, but primarily women, who attempt to attain senior level positions in corporations, the government, education, and other organizations.

These women are in a sense blocked from senior level positions just because of the fact that they are women and not men. This is how the term, the "glass ceiling" came about. Although women have made huge steps in the corporate world and have played key roles in organizations success, the corporate world is still male dominant. This has to do largely in the fact that almost all the men in corporations hold the higher level positions.

There are very few corporations when one thinks about how many corporations there are in the world that actually have a woman running it or holding a senior level position in that corporation. An important study was done by Rosa beth Moss Kanter in her book, Men and Women of the Corporation. In it she documents organizational inequality and argues that the barriers women face in predominantly male occupations can be attributed to their numerical minority in organizations. Although they may have similar qualifications the organizational structure nevertheless promotes gender differentiation through the mechanism of tokenism (Williams, 7).

What she simply means by this is that "tokens" stand out. The women are the tokens in the organization and receive a lot of attention. They are then therefore subject to stereotyping, role entrapment, and various other forms of marginalization (Williams, 7). The glass ceiling is not a typical type of discrimination in an organization but it is more along the lines of gender inequality and gender stereotype.

Gender inequality and gender stereotype can be seen in many ways such as pay, advances, hiring practices, training and development, and promotional opportunities that indicate signs of the glass ceiling in the workplace. The theory of gendered organizations is that the division of labor favors men because organizations value men and their qualities associated with masculinity more highly than they value women. A lot of executives believe that women are simply just not cut out for high level jobs. In fact, in the 19th century employers deliberately set aside jobs in administration and management for men because they believed the job holder to be level-headed, impartial, technically proficient, and even aggressive (Williams, 15). All of these qualities were associated with white, middle-class masculinity. Every organization has deeply embedded assumptions about gender and gender characteristics in the work place.

Female sex role stereotypes-inaccurate or partially inaccurate beliefs about women-provide the foundation upon which prevailing notions about women's inability to manage or lead effectively as executives are laid (Sekaran, 8). This plays a huge advantage for men. Men are seen to possess specialties associated with stereotypical masculine qualities such as strength, technical proficiency, and managerial ability (Williams, 12). Even men that enter the traditional female dominated jobs like nursing where it is in a sense not "manly" tend to receive preferential treatment in hiring and are channeled into certain male-identified specialties (Williams, 8). These male tokens benefit and move up in the administration unlike their opposite female tokens. Employers prefer to hire workers with few non-work distractions.

By non-work distractions this includes family life at home and the issue of pregnancy. Males typically have less non-work distractions. This is primarily due to the unequal division of household labor in most families. The woman is seen as the one who takes care of personal need and the family while the man is the one that goes out and works. Organizations are gendered because of the hierarchical division of labor. Gender segregation exists in almost every occupation.

Men for the most part have better paying and most prestigious jobs and highest positions of power. Men are looked at as the providers of the family so they have to get paid more. Despite more jobs and vast technological developments women are still earning less than men. On average, women receive 75 cents for every $1 earned by a man (Williams, 11).

In fact one survey from Fortune magazine surveyed 799 of the largest U.S. and industrial service companies and found that less than half of 1% of the highest paid officers and directors were women (Jacobs, 153). A more recent survey in 2002 found that the median total compensation of male CEOs in nonprofit organizations was $147,085, approximately 50% higher than the median total of female CEOs $98,108 in similar settings (Lockwood, 2). Women's advancement over the years has been hampered by well-ingrained corporate cultures. The working environment has always been a man's world especially as one goes higher in the ranks.

Corporate policies and practices have always maintained a certain status quo by keeping men in positions of corporate power. Boards of directors, who are the ones that usually elect people to senior job positions have for the majority been comprised of men. If the board is composed of all men, then they certainly are not going to elect a woman to a senior position like a CEO. They are going to elect someone like themselves. Work / life balance challenges can also impact a woman's ability to advance within a corporation. Women are seen as typically the primary family caregivers for children and the elderly.

Assumptions are always made about a woman's availability to a job without any outside interferences from family or personal responsibilities. The concept here is that of maternity. Maternity is different for men than it is women. For women, maternity includes everything from the biological clock, anticipation of motherhood, pregnancy, childbirth, physical recuperation, psychological adjustment, nursing, caring, etc. (Nichols).

There are shaped traditional roles of sexes. Women are stereotyped to be supportive, sensitive, and nurturing. A lot of corporations will not hire a woman for a senior level position on the basis that she could get pregnant and if she does then she will need to take maternity leave and that hinders her chances to move up. If a woman wants to be a CEO and then gets pregnant while she is the CEO, then what for the company? That is how a lot of executives look at the situation.

Many companies prefer that all employees are willing to give their all for the company and sacrifice for the company because it is in their best interests for all managers to compete for top management positions. Women that are career-and-family oriented are pretty much placed on the back burner and if a woman wants flexibility to balance their families and careers they are seen as not adequately committed to the organization whereas women who are aggressive and competitive as men are seen as pushy and unfeminine. As for promotion opportunities, women are usually overlooked because they are simply out of the loop. There is the common phrase that corporations are the "boys club".

Promotion opportunities favor men because women usually don't have access to the informal networks that men have. People in organizations develop work relationships. These relationships might carry over into their personal lives. The men will usually do "male activities" together like golf for instance. Women are left out of the circle and miss out on promotion opportunities because they are taken by the men. The glass ceiling is not only happening in the U.S. It is happening all over the world and is a lot worse at other countries.

This is largely due to traditional gender roles and cultural values. In Hong Kong, for example women are still largely seen as belonging in the house. In an interview, Jessica Caplan asks Patricia Chu, chairperson of the Hong Kong Equal Opportunities Commission about the glass ceiling. Chu attributes the dearth of women in senior positions to discrimination against women is still rampant in the workplace in Hong Kong. She goes on to state that "Although Hong Kong is a cosmopolitan city, there are still traditional values regarding the woman's role in the family."Glass ceilings boil down to discrimination", says Chu further explaining that these obstacles can work subtly and indirectly, effectively preventing women from having the same opportunities for training, exposure, promotion, and overseas posts as their male counterparts, thus making it far more difficult for them to climb the corporate ladder (Caplan, 5).

She also reported that 70% of the EOC employment-related sexual discrimination cases involved pregnancy-related discrimination (Caplan, 5). The consequences of a glass ceiling existing within an organization can be both good and bad. Society, the economy, and individuals all lose when workers are allocated to jobs on the basis of characteristics such as gender, race, or age rather than on their ability to perform work (Hartmann, 9). When jobs are classified as men's work or women's work, neither men nor women are free to do the jobs that might best suit them. Potentially women not moving up the corporate ladder could be bad for an organization in that they could potentially be a good untapped resource that the organization might need.

The misallocation of human resources in the work force necessarily depresses national productivity, and the loss in productivity that job segregation entails will increase if it persists at current levels at the same time that more women attain advanced education and their expected work life increases (Hartmann, 9). Many organizations then will develop affirmative action plans where they come up with a utilization analysis in which they compare the number of women and minorities that are in the labor market to those employed in the organization. If they are low then the glass ceiling could be found to be existent and the organization runs the risk of being sued if a woman can prove that she is being discriminated against. Even though there is quite a bit of negative consequences of the glass ceiling, there are some positives. Women, once put into a senior level position may perform well and benefit the organization. Some women may be good at getting things done and allocating resources well.

The glass ceiling encourages women to work harder and it shows that they are good employees to the organization. Also the glass ceiling might help so that not just anyone can move up, but people that are willing to handle what it takes to be in a senior level position. It is hard for women to break through the glass ceiling. Women that have broken through have often had to do it through a lot of hard work and through behaving differently. When they eventually do it, it doesn't really get any better for them. They are often isolated because they are usually the only women high up in that position and for a lot of men, working alongside a woman is threatening to them.

It can hurt their pride and self-esteem. Therefore men support gender segregation and establish barriers and when women break these barriers they are more often scorned. Christie Whitman, the former two-term Republican governor of New Jersey was long frustrated by her inability to ingratiate herself with the claque of men Republicans as well as Democrats who ran the Legislature (Fitzgerald, 2). She was often criticized as well for not getting along with the male-dominated leadership in the Legislature. Many women tend to fall victim to the "Double Bind" problem.

That is, women who attempt to fit themselves in managerial roles are often forced to behave like men. They then run the risk of being characterized as "aggressive" or "power hungry" or just plain "bitchy" (Nichols, 9). Yet women who act like women run the risk of being seen as "weak" and "ineffective", thus can't do the hard work of management. Even if they do manage to get that senior level position the glass ceiling is only to be replaced by the "glass cliff". The glass cliff is a new phenomenon arising because once the woman gets the high level job there is a close eye placed on her. Findings from a study by Exeter University suggest that female executives are more likely than their male counterparts to find themselves in precarious jobs with a high risk of failure (Connolly, 1).

The study goes on to say that women who break through the glass ceiling often find themselves on the edge of a glass cliff, with evidence appearing to show that FTSE 100 companies that put a woman on their board experienced in the run-up to that appointment consistently worse share price performance than those companies that appointed only men (Connolly, 1). However, despite all of these hardships women are starting to break through the glass ceiling and a lot of it isn't through moving up the corporate ladder. They are getting around corporations and the glass ceiling by becoming entrepreneurs. One such story is that of Kye Anderson.

She is the chairman, CEO, and president of her rapidly growing medical technology company that she started from her dining room table. Her father had died when she was twelve years old of a massive heart attack and ever since then she was motivated to go into the medical technology world so that she could help people. She basically taught herself many things and learned a lot about technology. She studied computer programming and became very familiar with transducers and electronic analyzers, figuring out how to translate analog data directly into digital information and computer graphics so doctors could easily read and interpret data. One day a doctor by the name of Stephen Boris came to her with a problem about a newborn baby that was born with a rare disease that every time the baby fell asleep it would stop breathing. Doctors figured out that they had to control the babies breathing externally by delegating how much carbon dioxide the baby breathed in.

In order to do this they needed to take blood samples all the time which was long and painful. To make a long story short, she developed a machine that showed the contents of the babies expired air and what he needed through the video screen. Thus her corporation was started and now she employs 130 people beneath her and has generated $15 million in sales (Nichols). Another success story like Kye Anderson's story is that of Susan Hockfield. In December, she will be the first woman ever in MIT's history to take over as its new president. Five years ago MIT had publicly confessed that it had discriminated against female scientists saying that the male-dominated culture had marginalized them.

Women were paid less, received fewer resources, and were often treated as if they were "invisible" (Symonds, 1). MIT admitted to doing this and now in December, Susan Hockfield will become the new president. As good as it sounds; it was no easy road for Susan. When others were starting families she put that on hold and focused on her work. She didn't marry until she had tenure. When she took over the computer science department there were no women.

She pressed to hire more women, now there are four working in that department (Symonds, 3). Those are only two success stories of woman making it in the working world. There are many more other stories out there like it. As one can see the glass ceiling still exists in our society and will probably continue to exist for a bit longer. Women are challenging it and many are beginning to break through because organizations are realizing that the working world has changed.

Women are no longer staying in the house to tend to the family. They are going out into the workplace just like the men and are competing for the best possible jobs that they can get. Works Sited Caplan, Jessica. China Staff.

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