The “Glass Ceiling”.
What is it and why does it exist?
The Yukl text describes the glass ceiling as the strong tendency to
favor men over women in filling high level leadership positions (Yukl,
2013). It is my opinion that this
concept is very true however; very unfortunate.
I think that organizations should take a page from the popular TV show
The Voice when hiring personnel to these high level positions. They could sanitize the resumes and do
interviews with voice altering software to ensure no biases are being made
based on sex alone. The Yukl text also
discusses the theory of male advantage.
It talks about how throughout the twentieth century these beliefs about
males being better suited for leadership and management roles and more
qualified. The thought was that men had
better traits and were more skilled in these areas than women. These theories also went into what was at the
time perceived to be male and female roles (strong and demanding for men,
caring and nurturing for women). My
thought is that if we remove these perceptions and make the decision to hire
personnel on their qualifications and interviews minus the gender stereotypes
and biases than we can alleviate this glass ceiling effect. The Rosabeth Kanter Video (2010) discusses
the way women in the workforce are treated differently. It goes into the area of pay and compensation
which I feel is still a big problem in the United States. It is very surprising to me that in 2016 we
are still discussing this. Why is it if
the work is the same and it is getting done the same way we would pay one group
of people less than another? Ms. Kanter
discusses a few reasons for this pay difference but I think the one that sums
up this issue is that people just don’t think women can negotiate as much or
that they don’t think as much of women. They Yukl text and the video both make some
good points about this and I agree with them.
To begin the Rosabeth Kanter video she discusses how this type of
discrimination takes place because people are comfortable in their respective
peer group (Kanter, 2010). Men prefer to
work with and hire men and the same for women.
She also discusses women and the exclusion from networks and their
ability to get in to these types of networks.
This helps explain why it is so hard for women to even get their feet in
the door. The Yukl text discusses how stereotypes
play a major role in the gender biases. Most
people believe that women can’t handle the rigor of senior level
leadership. There is also the bias of
family which effects women in the work place.
Why is it ok for the man to be away from the family working 80 hours a
week but not the woman? Many people feel
that the woman should be at home taking care of family and not working. This is a major reason there is such a gender
gap and discrimination.
Kanter, R. (2010). Women, Ambition and (Still) the Pay Gap. [Video
file]. Retrieved from:
Yukl, G. (2013). Leadership
in Organization (8th ed.). Upper Saddle River, NJ:
Prentice Hall.
No comments:
Post a Comment