Top Of Corporate Ladders example essay topic

The feminization of labor started during the earliest phases of industrialization. During this time period men and women were usually paid the same wages and worked side by side in the same factories. By the twentieth century men had taken over the workforce, absolutely dominating the technological areas where people are paid the most. Only one in five women was paid for her work, and these women were paid very little. By the 1970's more women were drawn to work because of higher pay, and by 1990 three out of five women were paid for their work.

This percentage is rapidly increasing, perhaps because of several changes in society. The U.S. price of living has increased, and many women have become employed to help pay this rising price (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). Many more women are graduating from college and other professional schools (Kilbourne 1995), and these women seek out the large amounts of job opportunities with higher pay that require higher education (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). But still, even though opportunities are becoming more equal for men and women, there is still a huge gender gap in the workforce.

Surveys of the top Fortune 1000 industrial and 500 service companies show that 95 percent of senior level managers are men, leaving a rare five percent of women to head very few companies (Redwood 1996). What is barring women from reaching the top of corporate ladders? The glass ceiling is a term coined for the invisible barrier to movement in the very top positions in business and government, making it difficult for women to reach the top of their profession (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). There are many reasons for the existence of this barrier, but two of the most prominent are social barriers (Redwood 1996), which often can cause women to feel uncomfortable or discouraged about moving up, and also women's "second shift", which is the "the unpaid housework that women typically do after they come home from paid employment" (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997). One of the reasons women are not found in top business positions is because they do not see other women at the top.

As Elizabeth Perle McKenna, a former publisher, says, "Women are bailing because they " re looking up and saying, 'Hey, there's nobody who looks like me up there. Am I going to knock myself out for the next twenty years only to be passed over for a man? ... Let me out. I want to do something in my life that matters. ' " (Jones 1997).

The fact that there are so few women at the top of the ladder is very discouraging to them, let alone the fact that women still only earn approximately 75 percent of what a man earns in the same career. Oftentimes when they see that their superiors are all men, they think that there is no chance of becoming a superior and bail out into a different business that has more to do with women. The majority of businesses that have women in top positions deal with mostly women. "Whatever kind of people populate the heart of the business... they " re going to have a better chance at becoming the company's president" (Jones 1997). This also goes along with the "syndrome" employers tend to have - they seem to feel the most comfortable hiring people who look like them (Redwood 1996). So if there are many women in a large retail corporation, they are more likely to hire a woman than a male, just as if there were many males doing the hiring they would more likely hire a man than a female.

There is also the problem of appearances. When men work with a woman, they expect her to look a certain way. Many of them still hold the age-old stereotype that women should not be working side by side with men, and they do not like to be reminded of the fact that women are equals to them, if not their superior. A woman cannot look too feminine or sexy, because this reminds the men they are working with a woman, and they would probably get distracted from their work. But a woman also cannot look overly unfeminine, such as in the Price Waterhouse case where a woman was denied a partnership because "she didn't wear lipstick" (Jones 1997). The men probably feel intimidated by manly women, and might not like that the woman is so close to them in the business ladder of success that she even acts like one of them, maybe even more so.

The case is about making women disappear into the background so that men do not realize they are working with females because "men sometimes don't like being reminded that they " re dealing with women". Women should not accent their sexuality and bring it to people's attention (Jones 1997). And once a woman dresses how she likes and acts how she wants to, it is different from the usual conformity of the corporate culture, and the woman is most likely not going to be hired. These reasons are part of the social aspect of the glass ceiling - how people perceive you and want to interact with you. There's also the "second shift" responsibilities of a woman that further bars her from climbing farther up the ladder. When a woman has a family, it is estimated that she does about 60 to 80 percent of the approximately 70 hours of housework per week, and then along with that a full-time working woman has another 40 hours or more of work to do outside of the home (Appelbaum and Chambliss 1997).

Among women who have faced gender-based barriers, those who chose to have children during their careers have been especially disadvantaged (Naff and Thomas 1994). Many have to quit their jobs because the companies they work for do not offer leave-of-absences or other options for pregnant women. The women do not accumulate enough experience, a priority in reaching the top, because they leave for extended periods of time, and oftentimes the companies do not let them return to work for them. A major reason for the existence of the glass ceiling is that women have to choose careers according to its flexibility. If a job allows them to have varying, flexible hours and allows time for a woman's many duties outside the workplace, a woman is more likely to choose it if she is planning or already has a family. The problem with these jobs is that they do not pay as much, which accounts for the wage gap between genders, and the way these jobs and companies are structured leave very little opportunity, if any, to climb the ladder to the top.

Although there are many barriers that stop women from reaching the top, the solutions to them are quite simple. On-site daycare at the workplace would help mothers stay at work and prevent them from quitting to stay at home with their children (Jones 1997). The company should also offer more "family friendly" policies so a woman has more options and opportunities to stay with the company. Also, if women were paid the same as men are, dollar for dollar, this would encourage them to stay with the company, go for the top rungs of the ladder, and perhaps overlook the fact that the vast majority of their superiors are male. Workforce diversity should also be a main goal of the business. The companies should look for men and women when they are hiring and not have a tendency to choose one over the other.

Rene Redwood even suggests monetary rewards for attaining diversity objectives, although that might not be entirely beneficial because then the employer might hire a less qualified woman for the job just so he receives a bonus. Another suggestion Redwood offers is training the entire workforce in diversity, which would open their minds and be more accepting towards women and minorities they work with. All of these additions would be beneficial to the companies who alter their policies. Once women start staying with the company after maternal leave due to more flexible hours, the company does not have to retrain new people to fill in the position. They have the women who possibly have been with the company for many years and have a lot of experience. The business loses time and productivity by retraining people, thus lowering the revenue and possibly causing the company to downsize, all because they did not want to make a few minor rearrangements to keep their former female employees (Jones 1997).

The glass ceiling is a firm fact in the corporate industry today. Women are unable to reach the top of the company they work for because of the invisible barriers society produces for them. If these companies would see how beneficial minor changes in their system could be for their overall productivity, the glass ceiling would be removed. As Elizabeth Perle McKenna says, all you have to do is "make the work fit into the [employees] lives so the company can continue to grow and be profitable and the employees can have working environments where they aren't tearing themselves apart" (Jones 1997). Once this is accomplished, men and women will truly have equal opportunity to rise and fall on the corporate ladder.

Bibliography

Jones, Barbara. 1997.
Giving Women the Business". Harpers, December, p. 47-58 Redwood, Rene. 1996.
The Glass Ceiling". In Motion Magazine: Washington D.C. Retrieved October 3, 2000 (web 1301/Lecture materials / glass ceiling commission.
htm) Naff, Katherine and Sue Thomas. 1994-1995.
The Glass Ceiling Revisited: Determinants of Federal Job Advancement". Policy Studies Review: 249-272 Kilbourne, Barbara, George Farkas, Kurt Ber on, Dorothea Weir, and Paula England. 1994.