The Glass Ceiling and Why It’s Not Good for Anyone

To be fair, the numbers have never looked better. There are more women graduating from law school, business school, and medical school than there have ever been, and the numbers are on a decisive upward trend. In fact, more women than men are taking home undergraduate degrees and graduating high school. It would appear that women are being equipped to contribute to society with more tools and more credentials on their side than ever before.

But let’s take a quick quiz. First, name five male CEO’s that you know or have heard of. Next, name five female CEO’s. Scratching your head for the second question? Not too surprising, considering that in 2007, only 13 Fortune 500 companies had women as CEO’s, up from 10 in 2006. Similarly, less than 10 percent of top executive positions were held by women. If women are being afforded equal opportunities in higher education, why does this opportunity and equality all but disappear when women start climbing the corporate ladder?

As one of the many Columbia women who have applied for jobs and internships and hope to eventually transition into the workforce, I am often led to believe that our careers will blossom through the steady hands of our own ambitions and that we can expect to navigate our careers in a climate of unfettered optimism. When attending various company presentations aimed at encouraging everyone to apply, we are bombarded with diversity initiatives and a nebulous commitment to achieving gender equality at work. Presenters tout values of work-life balance, emphasizing the possibility of maternity leave, sabbaticals, and subsidized child-care, while providing examples of women with families, successfully balancing careers and kids. Companies thus seem to recognize the extra attention women might need, and institutionally, it seems like they have set up an entire system for our success.

But what companies may not yet fully understand is that while they have been able to help women get in the door, they have not yet fully figured out how to keep them, or even how to promote them past the stereotypes that society has stubbornly attached to women. A November 2007 New York Times article by Lisa Belkin follows a flurry of examples that may help to partially explain why women seem to be ascending the corporate ladder into thin air. Female executives have to tread a thin line between “acting female” and being perceived as less competent, or “acting male” and being seen as “too tough,” “unfeminine,” and unlikeable. Additionally, many highly educated women are actually leaving the workplace to stay at home and raise their children, putting into question the effectiveness of work-life balance programs and whether they are effectively targeting the social barriers that continue to steer women toward more traditional roles.

At the heart of the debate on what works and what doesn’t is, at last, feminism itself. Today, I see two competing ideologies that attempt to promote equal rights for women and explain why perfect equality has not yet been achieved. On one side, women are acknowledged and accepted as inherently different, with a different set of skills that is simply not yet appreciated by a male-dominated world. On another side, the genders are undifferentiated on a fundamental psychological level, and women have the ability to acquire the same skills and persona as men if they so choose. However, women have been socialized for centuries to behave and prefer feminine roles and are only just now realizing the potential for change. Each ideology is a bit of an extreme from the other, and any one policy that caters to either one exclusively could prove to be a dangerous setback for the feminist movement.

Gone are the days when society would wonder if women could handle the workplace, or whether women were capable of contributing to society outside of keeping the home and raising a family. While it is surely a step in the right direction, gender-balanced hiring initiatives will not immediately solve the gender disparity that exists in corporate environments. And without a constant dialog and awareness of gender dynamics that must be advanced by the company itself, these initiatives may ultimately prove fruitless.

But beyond even the arguments for human rights, there is one straightforward and uncomplicated reason why women need to be a stronger presence in the workforce. In a January 2004 report by Catalyst, a research organization dedicated to issues relating to women’s advancement in business and the professional arena, 353 Fortune 500 companies were studied between 1996 and 2000. Controlling for industry and company type, the report concluded that top performers consistently had more women represented in their senior management positions.

In other words, to a company, more female leaders means more dollars added to the bottom line. If that is not enough reason for a stuffy corporate board room to start taking more action to bring in and retain women, then it is simply unfortunate that companies everywhere are choosing to miss an important growth opportunity.

The author is a senior in the School of Engineering and Applied Science majoring in electrical engineering. She is the webmistress of CWBS.