Glass Ceiling Is a Metaphor Research Paper

Interestingly, recent research indicates that some women may be creating their own class ceilings. For example, "female managers are more than three times as likely as their male counterparts to underrate their bosses' opinions of their job performance," ("Study: Women create 'their own glass ceiling'" 2009). Treanor (2007) found that "Women are jumping off the career ladder long before they hit the glass ceiling, raising serious questions about attempts to increase the number of female executives in company boardrooms."

In my experience, women do escape the rat race and may indeed underestimate their ability to achieve parity with men in the workplace, in politics, or in any other male-dominated arena. I have second-guessed myself, which is one of the reasons why I have also experienced barriers to promotion. Therefore, the research does corroborate the core reasons why the glass ceiling exists in the first place: women are taught to undervalue themselves. Females are socialized to be less assertive than men. The game rules are established by men for men, making it extremely difficult for women to retain their ethical stance while achieving personal and professional goals.The glass ceiling is surely constructed by many females who decide that it is not worth sacrificing core ideals to achieve goals that were in fact established by a patriarchal society.

References

Clark, H. (2006). Are women happy under the glass ceiling? Forbes. Retrieved online: http://www.forbes.com/2006/03/07/glass-ceiling-opportunities -- cx_hc_0308glass.html

Cotter, D.A., Hermsen, J.M., Ovadia, S., & Vanneman, R. (2001). The glass ceiling effect. Social Forces 80 (2). Retrieved: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2675593

Tesch, B.J., Wood, H.M., Helwig, a.L., & Nattinger, a.B. (1995). Promotion of women physicians in academic medicine. JAMA. 273:1022-1025.

Treanor, J. (2007). "Women quit before hitting glass ceiling." Guardian.co.uk. Retrieved online: http://www.guardian.co.uk/money/2007/mar/08/business.workingparents

"Women create their own glass ceiling," (2009). MSNBC. Retrieved online: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/32364451/ns/business-careers/.....