Glass Ceiling

Those who complain about glass ceiling should keep in mind that glass can be shattered if one strikes it hard enough and long enough.

S/LT AWAIS KHALID P.NO: 8159

What is glass ceiling???

Glass ceiling is an unacknowledged discriminatory barrier that prevents minority (women in this case) from rising to position of power or responsibility within an organization.

 In this context, what ceiling means is that there is limit to how far some one can climb the hierarchy. Where as Glass emphasizes on that while every thing is very clear, very real one can see each and every thing very clearly, that is it is transparent and not obvious to the observer.

 The term glass ceiling is most often applied in the business situation in which women feels that men are very much involved in the usage of power and women find it difficult to or rather impossible to reach to that level or break the glass ceiling.

Some references
Meg Whitman became the President and CEO of eBay, largest online auction company of the world. Carly Florina, became the CEO of H.P. Carly Florina, again became CEO of Dow 50 Company, and the CEO of a fortune 50 Company. Patrica F. Ruso, President and CEO of Lucent Technologies. Indira Noori, chief financial officer aand president of Pepsico. And she was the highest ranking women in the corporate world of America. Fortune ranked her as one of the most powerful women. Naina lal Kidwai , vice chairman and MD of Indian Investment banking division of HSBC,She was the third amongst the most powerful women of Asia according to Fortune.

Representation of Women in Management,2000

DOES GLASS CEILING REALLY EXISTS????

Debate Still continues

In Ladies perception Glass Ceiling Still exists. And if we ask boys about Glass ceiling the answer is NO SUCH PHENOMINON EXISTS And one thing I would like to share that all the names I mentioned in the reference have been asked the same question and everybody here would b surprised to know that they denied the existence of Glass Ceiling.

Some words
I hope that we are at a point that every body has figured out that there is no glass ceiling - Carly I did face a few obstacles in my career but most were because I was very young, not so much because of gender bias people with much more experience seemed to be available and that was a problem sometimes but none due to my being a women - Naina ICICI has always displayed more of a pro-women bias than an anti women one. I have never encountered a glass ceiling here. -Lalita

 All of them said that it took a little extra effort, some compromises and a little bit of support from the family to reach the top. But still the debate is on between the feminists and analysts..

Reasons why feminists feel that glass ceiling exists

Male dominated management, which made all the decisions for the company. Lack of proper anti discrimination law and government action on discrimination Men's attitude towards problems faced by women Preference of men over women of same educational qualification and caliber. Sexual harassment was seen as another major hindrance in the women's career.

Asian Perspective
Women are better seen as a homemaker. So the corporate organization in these countries did not seem to favor women It was a matter of a policy for not hiring women.

Some Asian examples

Videocon international we are from an orthodox family Tata motors- no women rule Many other company hire ladies for their work and not for the corporate work. On the other hand many company hire only ladies because of their inter- personel skills

 Still the feeling of GLASS CEILING exists and to avoid that many ladies/ women have became entrepreneurs However becoming enterpreneurs was not the solution to the problem of the glass Glass ceiling.

My perception
No glass ceiling in the corporate world Many incidents where women perform better than their colleagues All about passion, obsession and determination for the work Many have done it n many are still doing it.but in many these thing are missing and they call it THE GLASS CEILING

A survey revealed that women graduates from the premier Bschool like the IIMs were not very keen to build a career. A study on women graduates from IIM A showed that more than 70% of them do not possess a career.

AND STILL THE GLASS CEILING EXISTS!!!!