Psychology - Developmental Glass Ceiling

The term glass ceiling is most frequently applied in business circumstances in which women feel, either correctly or not, that men are deeply established in the upper ranks of power, and women, try as they might, find it almost impossible to break through. While the phrase glass ceiling is figurative, a lot of women who find themselves bumping their heads on it find it very real indeed. It is most frequently used to describe the sexist attitude a lot of women run into at the workplace. In a discussion of climbing the corporate ladder, the word ceiling implies that there is a limit to how far someone can go up. Along with this implied barrier is the idea that it is glass, meaning that, while it is very real, it is transparent and not noticeable to the observer (What is the Glass Ceiling, 2012).

Many years after the beginning of the glass ceiling metaphor, a lot of women say the glass ceiling is very much unbroken, pointing to data that show that women on average hold just 14 per cent of all executive...

But others disagree, citing advances made by women in recent years. And some challenge that the glass ceiling should be substituted by a different metaphor. No matter where one stands on the issue of a glass ceiling, there's no denying that women are underrepresented in the top ranks of corporate America, and they continue to earn less money than men every year (Yung, 2012).
"Though women make up nearly half the workforce, they accounted for only 7.5 per cent of the top-earning executive officer positions at Fortune 500 companies last year, according to Catalyst, a New York-based research organization that seeks to expand business opportunities for women. It also found that women held only 16 per cent of board seats at these large companies. And more than a quarter of the Fortune 500 had no female executive officers. Women also continue to lag behind men when it comes to pay. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, women in 2010 earned 81 per cent of the median weekly earnings of their male…