Glass Ceiling and Western Society - Essay Example

The sexual binary is a persistent feature of the workplace today and the glass ceiling is an implicit manifestation of the impediments that women face in the labor force. According to Paige Churchman, renowned feminist theorist Gay Bryan coined the term glass ceiling many decades ago to describe the invisible barriers to professional advancement that women face in the labor force. Although women have entered the paid labor force in record numbers, attaining leadership roles in a corporate environment remains a challenge and invisible barriers impeded their development. While women hope to lead by example and advance professionally, the challenges that they face today are less overt than they once were but remain important impediments to their full professional advancement (Churchman, 2009).

According to Women at Work, Leadership for the Next Century, the glass ceiling is a phenomenon in which invisible, artificial barriers to the professional advancement of women remain the greatest impediments to their growth within an organization (Smith, 1999). The glass ceiling is arguably the most important impediment to the professional development of women in the 21st century and it is predicated upon the sexual binary. The glass ceiling is an important challenge for women in the paid labor force because it is implicit and limits their opportunities for professional advancement. While discrimination and sexual harassment are often explicit barriers to the full inclusion of women within the paid labor force, the entry of women into paid labor in record numbers has not resulted in complete equality.

According to Nora Frenkel more than 25 years ago, “women have reached a certain point. I call it the glass ceiling. There isn't enough room for all those women at the top,” (Meyerson & Fletcher, 2000, 127). The glass ceiling, in addition to “pink collar ghettos”, are important yet often ignored aspects of the challenges women face in the labor force today. These metaphors aptly describe a labor force that continues to be male-dominated and in which patriarchal ideas about what women can do limit their professional advancement. The glass ceiling is predicated upon the sexual binary and the historic division of society into private and public spheres. Although women account for more than 50% of society, there are underrepresented in positions of power within the corporate world.

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Can women move beyond the glass ceiling? While as a whole, women have made remarkable progress in the professional world, the glass ceiling is one of the most insidious examples of the patriarchal society in which we inhabit and the less-overt forms of gender discrimination which women face on a daily basis. The glass ceiling is difficult to overcome because it is latent and not necessarily visible to both men and women. Thus, the glass ceiling represents invisible barriers to the professional advancement of women in leadership roles in corporate America. Although women are taught to lead by example, a major hindrance for women in the labor force today is the fact that their professional growth is stunted. The glass ceiling represents the implicit challenges that women face and because it is difficult to quantify it remains a key component of the patriarchal foundations of the American labor market (Smith, 1999). Read More