The glass ceiling
The phrase "glass ceiling" is a metaphor that refers to the obstacles—namely, gender- and racialbased discrimination—that prevent women and minorities from advancing to the top of the corporate
ladder in the United States. The term originally applied to women but eventually expanded to include
all people not part of the dominant group in the workforce. Writers Carol Hymowitz and Timothy D.
Schellhardt are generally credited for coining the term in a special report for the Wall Street Journal in
1986, although the phrase previously appeared in a number of published items in the early 1980s.
The Wall Street Journal article, which gained much attention after its publication, led to a study of
discrimination in top corporations by the U.S. Department of Labor and the inclusion of the Glass
Ceiling Act in the Civil Rights Act of 1991.
Until the passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1964, there was no legislation in place to prohibit
discrimination in the workplace. Specifically, Title VII of the Civil Rights Act of 1964 prohibited
employers from discriminating against applicants and employees on the basis of such factors as race
and gender. It also created the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC), the federal
agency in charge of eliminating workplace discrimination in the United States. In 1965, President
Lyndon B. Johnson signed Executive Order 11246 to promote equality between the races in federal
contracting. In 1968, this mandate was extended to women.
Despite these measures and the forward steps made by women in the workforce since then, the 1986
Wall Street Journal article offered figures and real-life examples as evidence of the social bias that
effectively prevented women from gaining top positions in upper management. A prevailing notion
was that women, more concerned about their families than their careers, would be more likely to take
extended leaves of absence. As indicated by a survey referenced in the article, a majority of men said
they would not feel comfortable having a female superior. Others maintained the idea that women are
not naturally cut out for upper management. Additionally, a majority of individuals of both sexes felt
that women would find themselves unable to become fully accepted in an environment traditionally
dominated by men.
In 1989, growing concerns about the glass ceiling prompted the U.S. Department of Labor (DOL) to
investigate the phenomenon. In 1991, the DOL published its findings in A Report on the Glass Ceiling
Initiative, which basically defined and affirmed the existence of the glass ceiling. This report led to the
passage of the Glass Ceiling Act of 1991, which became Title II of the Civil Rights Act of 1991. The
Glass Ceiling Act established the Glass Ceiling Commission, whose responsibility it was to carry out a
study and formulate a report on how to remove the glass ceiling and the best ways to increase
advancement opportunities for women and minorities. In its findings, published in 1995, the Glass
Ceiling Commission found that 95% of all high-level managers were men. Further, women who
actually broke the glass ceiling to become high-level managers had much lower salaries than their
male counterparts.
Since the 1990s, progress in breaking the glass ceiling has moved at a slow yet upward pace. In 2005,
the women's research and advocacy group Catalyst published the results of its annual Fortune 500
survey, which found that 14.7% of women held board seats at Fortune 500 companies, an increase
from 9.6% in 1995, the year that the first survey was conducted. By 2007, according to a 2010
Government Accountability Office (GAO) report, women held 40% of management positions in the
U.S. workforce. In addition, women made some progress in closing the wage gap, as female managers
in 2005 earned about 72% of what male managers earned, representing an increase of only four
percentage points since 1995. In the workforce overall, though, the 2010 report cited that in 2009
women still earned only 80.2 cents for every dollar a male earned.