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The Glass ceiling term refers to the notion of the barrier or an obstacle between a person and success. This term is mostly used for women, since they are the one who face barrier while they work in male dominated environment. After the women’s feminist movement in 1960s and 70s many people think that the discrimination of women lives only in the history these days. However, in practice, there are still barriers and issues that effect women. It has always been male dominance and even in modern, ‘equal right’ society women have to struggle and fight to have same privileges as men. In business in particular women are in minority, yet they do same job as men and even same quality of work but do not get full recognition or credits for that. It was not that long ago when society recognized full potential of female input to the workplace. In each country of the European Union in the 50 largest publicly traded corporations women make up nearly 11% of the highest officials and 4% of the CEOs and heads of boards on average. Moreover, women make up more than half of the managerial and professional labor, but account for just over 1% of all Fortune 500 chief executives.(H. Eagly, Alice) According to the survey made by Sheila Wellington, Marcia Brumit Kroft and Paulette R. Gerkovich from Harvard Business Review women executives and CEOs distinguish an obstacles to growth on the workplace differently. From the graph below it seems clearly that they nearly agreed on a few points: Lack of general management or line experience, which is the first barrier, 79% of women executives and 90% of CEOs and sexual harassment, 12% of female executives and 8% of CEOs, which is counted as the last limit.
The majority of women executives account exclusion from informal networks, stereotyping, lack of mentoring, shortage of role models, and commitment to personal responsibilities as the most important barriers to achieve the position in power. CEO mention women’s ineffective leadership style and their lack of skills to reach senior level as one of the major barriers in advancement.
These differences are highly important as they show that prejudices about women in the workplace still exist. (Wellington, par.8) Therefore, this is not a whole picture, there is some ways to fight with the Glass ceiling. Margie Warrell in her article “Glass Ceiling Or Glass Cage? Breaking Through The Biggest Barrier Holding Women Back” wrote about 7 steps for women to overcome the barriers in the workplace.
1. “Unleash your ambition.” Releasing aspiration is a tough process, however, it can lead to a new trajectory of thinking, that discloses hidden human forces and new possibilities.
2. “Know your value.” People around will not value your possibilities, skills, potential, unless you can do it by yourself. Do not underestimate yourself, your personal and professional qualities, try to understand that you deserve rewards and promotion.
3. “Do not lead from the crowd.” You have to see yourself as a leader and try to make your own image of leadership, even if it takes you apart from the crowd. In order to achieve what is desired, it is important to take your own way, even if there was nobody on this way before.
4. “Be willing to rock the boat.” Women are good in building relationships, but they are often afraid to say something that can be used against them. In your communication you do not have to be afraid of being straight-forward in expressing your opinion, so you can build influence and give people understanding of the value you bring.
5. “Advocate for yourself.” Let the people know more about your goals, as people who know what you want can help you to get it. Moreover, do not be fear to be more courageous in your communication. Be willing to ask. No asking often guarantees that you will not get higher salary, more support or empowerment.
6. “Refuse to tolerance the intolerance.” In order to deserve respect and being heard and fully understood at work or similar environment, you need to be able to learn how to represent yourself clearly and be ready to defend your passion and opinion even when everyone is up against you and is trying to fail you. It is crucial to be able to be strong in terms of not allowing anyone to intimidate you.
7. “Embrace risk as crucial to your success.” You cannot build your confidence with your skills and qualities or make your leadership influence stronger without taking risks such as risk of losing your job, failing, elimination, critique, which can be really intimidating and distressing.
Nonetheless, it is possible to break down some barriers that women face on their way to success. Women need to have their own unions that will protect and support their rights, and will be able to help them to get all credits as a rightful person at work place. Yet, there are still some cultural differences, which makes one culture accept women at the higher position of power, while women in other cultures are suffering from being treated poorly and not even given that chance to try.
Challenges and opportunities perceived for women in North America and Middle East and international employment opportunities.
There are issues in different cultures that women on the workplace face. Those barriers varies according to the cultural differences. There has been been a research made by Kate Hutchings, Pamela Lirio and Beverly Dawn Metcalfe called “Gender, globalization and development: a re-evaluation of the nature of women’s global work” in which they analyzed differences of women’s opportunities and challenges that they face while achieving the position in labor force. The research was made among women in the Middle Eastern countries: Bahrain, Egypt, Jordan, The kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Oman, Quatar and the United Arab Emirates; and North America: the United States of America and Canada.
There are some challenges that Middle Eastern and North American women face.
Global:
1. “Limited awareness of global opportunities.” North American women have more access to global assignments.
2. “Discrimination from perspective to other countries.” Middle Eastern women are blocked by negative attitudes from the rest of the world.
Societal:
1. “Stereotypes about women’s capabilities.” Negative effect of stereotypes about women as housewives, so they lack necessary qualities for proper global work both in Middle Eastern and North American societies.
2. “Cultural constrains for women’s participation at work.” Lack of cultural reconciliation for Middle Eastern women to be equaly valued in the workforce.
3. “Women‘s caring responsibilities.” For women both in North America and the Middle East it is important to create a work-life balance, otherwise, their working capabilities can be limited caused by problems in family.
Organizational:
1. “Gendered selection, training and pay within organizations.” North American women, who choose to work virtually because of their families lack opportunities that women without children have. The Middle Eastern have less selection and training opportunities versus men.
2. “Mixed organizational support for women with families.” North American women have more opportunities to travel doing global work than women in the Middle East, who have the lack of childcare and support from their husbands to work.
Opportunities of Middle Eastern and North American women.
Global:
1. “Global carrier development” Middle Eastern women see global work as the opportunity to break cultural stereotypes, while the North American women can be recognized by managers and provided with new opportunities of working abroad.
Societal:
1. “Strong female role models” stands for women’s need to achieve leading position. Getting power by a woman has a positive effect on Eastern male dominant society because it shows breakthrough in equalizing rights of men and women.
2. “Support from families.” Having support from their male family members is important for all women. Careers in North American families are equally important versus the Middle Eastern ones.
Govermental:
1.”Government legislation and support for women.” Government law system and training programs are important for making women as global leaders.
Organizational:
1. “Organizational support for women at work.” Women all over the world need supportive strategies from organizations in managing work-life balance, having cross-cultural exchanges of employees across the world.
2. “Organizational training and development.” Organizations should provide inter-cultural training and mention religious holidays and festivals for their foreign workers.
The study shows that women face the challenge of balancing career with family. Middle Eastern women lack government support and are negatively affected by cultural stereotypes, while North American women are stressed about how to organize their work-life balance to achieve their goal in global working.
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