In pursuit of Glass Ceiling

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I stumbled across a line, (while leisurely idling away my time as I scrolled through my social media feed) which confused me deeply. Reading this line made me sit up and reread it, then my mother called and said the food is ready and I forgot all about it. For a while. But somehow whenever I’d be by myself, left alone with my thoughts, this line kept coming back to me. A week passed and this line irked me, like an itch that I could not scratch. The line said -

“There is no Glass Ceiling at my workplace.”

I had to figure out why this distrubed me. This is a great thing right? Being a working woman in the corporate world, I should feel happy and inspired then why was it bothering me?

I spent the next 2 weeks introspecting, reading and getting views from different people on this. This is how it went:

Introspection

Why does this line bother me? It bothered me, because it felt incorrect. I wanted to see what my friends and colleagues thought. Hence, I decided to put up a survey on LinkedIn, asking a simple question:

Is there a Glass Ceiling at your workplace?

And I was very optimistic, I felt like people would be reacting like “Pooja duh”. Here’s the result of this survey:

This reminded me of the famous line from the Usual Suspects -

“The greatest trick the Devil ever pulled was convincing the world he didn’t exist”.

Was I right, or just overthinking? So the next step was to read up and understand more about Glass Ceiling and to speak to the people who have responded with a No on why they feel so.

Summary of my readings

I read from different sources, but eventually like many other MBA grads, I turned to HBR for light and direction. I found this very interesting HBR article titled — A Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling.

I would recommend reading this article for anyone who wants to know/understand this in more depth. It is a 30–40 min read for an average reader like myself.

For others, let your humble servant take a stab at summarising its brilliance.
The article opens by exploring the root cause of this inequity (not inequality) and attributes it to the fact that women are entering into the world which was initially designed by men keeping men in mind. This doesn’t place blame on men, but objectively identifies this as the cause.

Equality vs Equity

Now this article progresses to explore 3 different approaches that have been employed in the past to deal with this “inequity” and does it by beautifully using height as a metaphor/replacement for gender. An excerpt from the post —

“Imagine, therefore, a world made by and for short people. In this world, everyone in power is under five-foot-five, and the most powerful are rarely taller than five-foot-three. Now imagine that after years of discrimination, tall people finally call for change — and short people agree that the current world is unfair and amends should be made.”

Approach 1: Teach tall people to act like short people — ex: slouching through small doors etc.
Approach 2: Accommodate tall people by making structural changes -ex: making bigger doors etc.
Approach 3: Celebrate differences and utilise the differences -ex: putting tall people in jobs where the height is an advantage

Though it is a step forward, still it doesn’t address the root cause, only dealing with the effects/symptoms of the root cause.
In all the above approaches, there is one common thing — tall people are a problem that needs to be fixed, taught, accommodated, celebrated. Hence placing the onus on tall people to make it in the world not fundamentally built keeping them in mind.

Before I continue to talk more about this HBR article, I want to throw in some numbers here. Because it will not only make me sound smarter (fingers crossed), but also appeal to those readers who think all of this is wishy washy stuff with no real grounding. (Source: https://builtin.com/diversity-inclusion/glass-ceiling)

• Both male and female managers are twice as likely to hire men over women.
• Women are 25–46% more likely to be hired with blind applications.
• 40% of people notice a double standard against female candidates.
• At companies where 90% of leadership is men, half of men at the company view women as being well-represented.
• Men are 30% more likely to achieve managerial roles.
• Only 38.6% of managerial roles are held by women.
• Just 10% of leadership in the workplace is represented by women.
• 34% of people see male executives as better risk assessors.
• Women make up 23% of C-Suites.
• Women of color make up 4% of C-Suites.
• Women make up 4.1% of Fortune 500 CEOs.
• Only 3% of Fortune 500 companies have at least one Hispanic or Latinx member on their board of directors.
• Less than 19% of managers are Asian or Asian American.
• 14% of executives are Asian or Asian American.
• Contrary to popular belief, men and women ask for pay raises at the same rate.
• Women receive pay raises 5% less often than men

Why did people feel there is no Glass Ceiling?

I reached out to multiple people who had responded no or I haven’t thought about it, to understand why they think that way. Common theme of responses is as below:

• It is not intentional, all the processes are in place (Approach 2)
• People at my workplace are very cognizant of gender biases and talk about equality (Approach 3)
• We have many training sessions within company specially for female employees (Approach 1)

Interesting, isn’t it?

This entire exercise over weeks, made me realise couple of things:

• Because this is not plainly evident now, it makes it all the more difficult to fight it/break it because as I mentioned many people deny the very existence of it
• We often look at people’s intention in most cases, but just because intentions aren’t bad doesn’t mean the system doesn’t need to improve
• Whatever small instances of inequity/preferential treatment/bias we experience we park them as one off cases and hence feeding the beast
• Because it is not as evident and prominent but more deep seated — means it requires a shift in approach

Coming back to the HBR article, it talks about small wins and how we can utilise persistent small wins to break this barrier.

• Acknowledging there is something that needs to be fixed
• Because it is not evident and apparent but more deep seated, it requires small efforts on daily basis to chip away at the remaining roots of it
• Pick up a small issue to solve — solve this small issue, hence achieving a small win and feeding the positive loop

I also believe it is equally important to talk about it and encourage others to talk about it (hence my humble attempt via this post).
Let’s not brush it under the rug just because that is easier. Multiple generations of brave women and men have struggled to ensure we have this voice and a seat at the table. Now the onus is on us. I’ll leave you with this parting thought: