Barriers Metaphors

• The Concrete Wall
• The Glass Ceiling
• The Labyrinth & The High Bridge

Passed by Congress June 4, 1919, and ratified on August 18, 1920, the 19th amendment granted women the right to vote.

"I don't think a woman should be in any government job whatever. I mean, I really don't. The reason why I do is mainly because they are erratic. And emotional"

“The Concrete Wall rested on division of labor dictating that men should be breadwinners and women should be homemakers”
(Eagly & Carli, 2007)

“Even those women who rose steadily through the ranks eventually crashed into an invisible barrier. The executive suite seemed within their grasp, but they just couldn’t brake through the glass ceiling.”
Wall Street Journal article by Carol Hymowitz & Timothy Schellhardt, 1986

The Glass Ceiling

• In the 1970s some barriers start to shift
• Women were being misled about their opportunities
• The U.S. Congress established a commission to investigate it
• A 1989 Wall Street Journal – “Job interviewers’ dirty little secret”
• Women remained excluded from higher level positions

The Labyrinth

• The glass ceiling had broken, Wall Street Journal,  2004
• Many women are aware that barriers are no longer absolute
• Paths to the top exist and some women can find them
• The successful routs can be hard to discover
• Assumptions about gender differences have become fuzzier

“The best leadership is found by choosing leaders from the largest pool of talent, and that includes women…opening doors for women fosters equal opportunity and can help a society allocate its HRs optimally”

In the U.S. Women gained the right to vote

• in 1780
• in 1823
• in 1920
• women always had the right to vote