Glass Ceiling Briggs Myers

Psychological Tests

There are a few changes that are likely to occur in the workforce, given a 60% participation rate for women. First, that number is likely to climb. The financial demands of modern life are such that fewer families are able to survive on a single breadwinner, even if they wanted to. But few actually want to in this day and age. One of the issues that will be addressed increasingly is the issue of the wage gap, which stems in large part from the way that different careers are paid, with fields dominated by women paying less on average. These fields, however, are in demand, and pay will have to start to reflect that in order to draw more people -- and more women -- into the workforce. Neumark and Postlewaite (1998) noted that poor pay was one of the reasons why women stay out of the workforce -- there is no particular incentive to enter the workforce unless pay for the jobs they wish to do improves. The market simply cannot continue to undervalue certain types of labor and expect positions to be filled; an upward adjustment in wages will have to occur.

Another change likely to occur is more women breaking through the glass ceiling. It seems highly unlikely that women are going to impose a glass ceiling upon themselves. With greater labor force participation, the glass ceiling will be increasingly broken. Essentially, gender disadvantages are greater at the top of the corporate hierarchy than at the bottom, but with more women working, they will fill more progressive roles, to the point where the glass ceiling is pushed higher up, until eventually it no longer exists (Cotter, Hermsen, Ovadia & Vanneman, 2001). This is a trend that one can foresee not just for the next five years but longer until such time as the glass ceiling is eliminated altogether. The reality is that the glass ceiling is a bias that represents an inefficient use of human resources, and companies that eliminate it can gain competitive advantage by having all the right people in the right roles, up to the very top of the organization.

2. The most popular psychological/personality test is the Briggs-Myers type indicator. This is because it is relatively accurate and easy to understand. Further, when a test becomes a standard, then practitioners gain experience using it, so that they use it better than other alternative tests. There are many, however, who feel that Briggs-Myers is limited as an indicator and should not be utilized exclusively, and practitioners should be aware of its limitations. In particular, when the reading indicates a "slight" preference, this means that the answer is not particularly definitive, yet many in industry read it as definitive. Briggs Myers thus has become a shorthand method of analysis to the point where many seem unaware of its flaws even as they use it routinely (Michael, 2003).

Briggs-Myers is what is known as a preference-based test, where the person is evaluated using questions about their preferences. While there are critiques of this method, it is important to know that Briggs-Myers is subject to updates and refinements. Since the test was first introduced, the field of personality psychology has improved significantly, and there is a lot more empirical support for the use of preference-based testing than their once was (Caplan, 2003). As such, a modern personality test of this nature is likely to be fairly robust. The fact that Briggs-Myers has also been so widely used also means that there is a vast body of data built into it, in particular into its analysis.