How To Breaking the Glass Ceiling

“Steps to breaking the glass ceiling ...”

Hobnob With The Bigwigs

According to stereotype, women are better at developing relationships than men. But that's not true in the corporate world, says Carol Gallagher, author of Going to the Top.

Women tend to put their heads down and finish their work, assuming they'll get noticed, she said. "Guys are out playing golf and networking," she says. The men gain valuable connections.

They also learn about big-picture strategic issues, knowledge that helps them climb to the top.

Don't Nitpick

Women tend to obsess about details, says Gallagher. She's seen women in board meetings contradict a presenter when one fact was wrong in a document. That offends the presenter, she says, without accomplishing much. Men are more likely to let small errors fly in order to preserve their relationships.

Sell Yourself

Make sure your bosses know your ambitions and your capabilities. "Women tend to expect that meritocracy will take place," says Gill Rider, chief leadership officer at Accenture. But meritocracy won't work on its own. Women, like men, need to promote themselves and their achievements.

Ask For More Money

Women are more likely than men to take whatever salary is offered to them, because they don't want to rock the boat. A client of Gallagher's discovered that a junior male colleague was making $100,000 more than she was. She talked to her boss, who saw the error--and perhaps the threat of a lawsuit--and promptly upped her salary by $100,000.

Have Fun

Women burn out, Gallagher says. It's well-known that women do more housework than men. But women also tend to stay in the office, while men are more likely to be out networking and building connections. "Women are fried, exhausted, at the end of the day, the week, the year," Gallagher says. "The men are having more fun."

Take Risks

A client of Gallagher's wanted a new challenge. So she told her boss she was interested in moving to a more senior position. The boss came through with an offer, but it was in a different division that the client knew little about. She turned the offer down. "She didn't want to take the risk because she wasn't sure if she could be perfect at it," Gallagher says. Her husband convinced her to take the job.

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Women still face Glass Ceiling

“Barclays Bank appoints 5 women among 80 managing directors”

Barclays Capital, the investment banking division of Barclays, has been forced to defend its record as an equal opportunities employer after it emerged that it had promoted 80 managing directors, of which only five are women. BarCap, employs about 15,700 staff across offices in 26 countries, took out a full-page advertisement in the Financial Times 10 Jan, to announce the promotions, covering public relations executives as well as bankers in locations from London and New York to Madrid and Singapore.

The investment banking unit, led by Bob Diamond, specialises in the corporate credit markets and has been one of the fastest-growing City employers. It accounts for more than a third of Barclays’ annual profits, which last year topped £7 billion, and employs a little under half the group’s 33,000 staff.

Two of the new female BarCap MDs are in London. The other three are based in New York, Jakarta and Singapore.

Employment commentators said that the promotions underscored the perception of the City remaining a male-dominated environment. Nevertheless, they were loath to judge BarCap, pointing out that the decision about whether to pursue a banking career is also a lifestyle choice, tending to involve long hours and a gruelling travel schedule, albeit for considerable financial rewards. It emerged yesterday that, after meeting performance targets, Mr Diamond was on course to collect a £14.8 million payout covering the past three years. The payout means that Mr Diamond is likely to have received about £75 million in pay, cash bonuses and share awards since he joined the board in 2005.

Heather McGregor, a director of Taylor Bennett, the recruitment consultant, said: “Investment banks do struggle to find women for senior positions because very often women have other agendas and choose not to make their careers a priority.”

Of the 358 executive directors at FTSE 100 firms, only 14 — less than 4 per cent — are female, according to Manifest, the proxy shareholder voting specialist.

A spokeswoman for The Equalities and Human Rights Commission said that it was disappointed but not surprised by the lack of female appointees at BarCap: “It’s not a simple question of discrimination — it’s also about working practices.”

Siobhan Loftus, a media relations executive at Barclays Capital and one of the new managing directors, defended the promotions, which she said were based entirely on merit. “We are a meritocracy. In our diversity policy we would hope to promote irrespective of any gender bias,” she said.

“We would always look for the best person for the job. We want to provide an environment where people feel comfortable irrespective of their background, gender, sexuality or race.”

Food for Thought:

Economist "Women in Business" 2005 ...

It's 20 years since the term “glass ceiling” was coined by the Wall Street Journal to describe the apparent barriers that prevent women from reaching the top of the corporate hierarchy; and it is ten years since the American government's specially appointed Glass Ceiling Commission published its recommendations. In 1995 the commission said that the barrier was continuing “to deny untold numbers of qualified people the opportunity to compete for and hold executive level positions in the private sector.” It found that women had 45.7% of America's jobs and more than half of master's degrees being awarded. Yet 95% of senior managers were men, and female managers' earnings were on average a mere 68% of their male counterparts'.

Ten years on, women account for 46.5% of America's workforce and for less than 8% of its top managers, although at big Fortune 500 companies the figure is a bit higher. Female managers' earnings now average 72% of their male colleagues'. Booz Allen Hamilton, a consulting firm that monitors departing chief executives in America, found that 0.7% of them were women in 1998, and 0.7% of them were women in 2004. In between, the figure fluctuated. But the firm says that one thing is clear: the number is “very low and not getting higher”.

Source: Times Online

In August 2006 Forbes reported that 70% of women and 57% of men believe an invisible barrier -- a glass ceiling -- prevents women from getting ahead in business, according to a study of 1,200 executives in eight countries, including the U.S., Australia, Austria and the Philippines were the findings of a study conducted by
Accenture.

Women aren't as worried about the pay gap as they were five years ago, says Carol Gallagher, president of the Executive Women's Alliance and author of Going To The Top: A Road Map for Success from America's Leading Women Executives. Gallagher, who is also an executive coach, says Gen Xers and Yers don't think any barriers prevent them from getting to the top.

And baby boomers are now looking toward retirement, not obsessing about pay. When Gallagher published her book in 2000, there was a huge demand for information about the gender gap. At the time, almost all her executive coaching clients were women seeking the secrets of corporate success. Now 70% of her clients are men. "There [isn't] a need for as much of the women's group stuff," Gallagher says.

To some extent, there's a disconnect between American women and their counterparts abroad. In a study of American executives by Catalyst, a research and advocacy firm, women were just as likely as men to say they aspired to senior management positions. "Women want the responsibilities and rewards that come with top positions," says Sheila Wellington, a professor at New York University's Stern School of Business, who was president of Catalyst when the survey was conducted.

But a global study, also conducted by Catalyst, found that men worldwide desire the top jobs more often than women.

Even in the U.S., some experts say the glass ceiling doesn't affect job satisfaction. Women make sacrifices at work in exchange for greater happiness in their lives as a whole, says Warren Farrell, author of Why Men Earn More.

His book offers 25 reasons for the pay gap: Women work fewer hours, for example, and they don't stay at jobs as long as men do. Whether it's nature or socialization driving their decisions, women tend to choose lives that allow them to spend more time with their families, Farrell contends.

Even ambitious women don't measure success in high salaries and fancy job titles. Relationships with colleagues and giving back to the community are more important to women than salary, according to "The Hidden Brain Drain: Off-Ramps and On-Ramps in Women's Careers," a study by the Center for Work-Life Policy, which was published in the Harvard Business Review last year.

"They want to feel satisfied and good about their work, but also want to feel satisfied about other things in their life," says Melinda Wolfe, head of global leadership and diversity at Goldman Sachs Group (nyse: GS - news - people ).

Even if most women don't want to break the glass ceiling, Wolfe says, the few that do shouldn't be ignored. Sometimes their ambitions have been tempered by a corporate culture that stifles their success. Sometimes they choose circuitous career paths, taking some time to care for children, prepare for a career change or work in the nonprofit sector.

There's another reason why the pay gap has barely budged in the last five years: Women don't ask for more money. "They don't think they deserve it," says Lois Frankel, president of Corporate Coaching International and author of Nice Girls Don't Get the Corner Office. She adds, "We don't have the [negotiating] skills. We see it as something smarmy."

But Susan Solovic, CEO of SBTV, a Web site that creates video programming aimed at small-business owners, offers another reason why women aren't complaining about the pay gap: They've decided to work for themselves. The number of women-owned firms grew 17% between 1997 and 2004, according to the Center for Women's Business Research, while the total number of firms rose only 9%. Says Solovic: "There is really no glass ceiling when it comes to owning your own business."

Source: Forbes

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Women and the Labyrinth of Leadership

“When you put all the pieces together, a new picture emerges for why women don’t make it into the C-suite. It’s not the glass ceiling, but the sum of many obstacles along the way.”

Alice H. Eagly & Linda L. Carli in their book "Through the Labyrinth" identified that Women occupy 40% of all managerial positions in the United States. Where only 6% of the Fortune 500's top executives are female, and just 2% of those firms have women CEOs. "We've long blamed such numbers on the "glass ceiling," notion that women successfully climb the corporate hierarchy until they're blocked just below the summit. But the problem stems from discrimination operating at all ranks, not just the top,"

To move more women into the corporate executive suite, one must attack all barriers to advancement simultaneously. Such as: "Prepare women for line management with demanding assignments. Use objective criteria to measure performance. And give working mothers additional time to prove themselves worthy of promotion."

They explain the need for Metaphors since they matter because they are part of the storytelling that can compel change ... Eagly & Carli goes on to redefine a better metaphor for what confronts women in their professional endeavors naming it "The Labyrinth". Because of its image with a long and varied history in ancient Greece, India, Nepal, native North and South America, medieval Europe, and elsewhere. As a contemporary symbol, it conveys the idea of a complex journey toward a goal worth striving for.

Passage through a labyrinth is not simple or direct, but requires persistence, awareness of one’s progress, and a careful analysis of the puzzles that lie ahead. It is this meaning that they convey in "Through the Labyrinth".

Women who aspire to top leadership, routes exist but are full of twists and turns, both unexpected and expected. Because all labyrinths have a viable route to the center, it is understood that goals are attainable. The metaphor acknowledges obstacles but is not ultimately discouraging.

Times have changed, however, and the glass ceiling metaphor is now more wrong than right. For one thing, it describes an absolute barrier at a specific high level in organizations. The fact that there have been female chief executives, university presidents, state governors, and presidents of nations gives the lie to that charge. At the same time, the metaphor implies that women and men have equal access to entry- and midlevel positions. They do not.

The image of a transparent obstruction also suggests that women are being misled about their opportunities, because the impediment is not easy for them to see from a distance. But some impediments are not subtle. Worst of all, by depicting a single, unvarying obstacle, the glass ceiling fails to incorporate the complexity and variety of challenges that women can face in their leadership journeys. In truth, women are not turned away only as they reach the penultimate stage of a distinguished career. They disappear in various numbers at many points leading up to that stage.

Eagly & Carli explains that tackling the obstacles to women's progress, will increase a firm's competitive prowess. "If we can understand the various barriers that make up this labyrinth, and how some women find their way around them, we can work more effectively to improve the situation, and understand the obstructions that women run up against?"

They recommend these strategies for increasing the number of women in top positions:

Understand the Career Barriers Women Encounter
Extensive academic and government research studies identify these obstacles:

* Prejudice: Men are promoted more quickly than women with equivalent qualifications, even in traditionally female settings such as nursing and education.

* Resistance to women's leadership: People view successful female managers as more deceitful, pushy, selfish, and abrasive than successful male managers.

* Leadership style issues: Many female leaders struggle to reconcile qualities people prefer in women (compassion for others) with qualities people think leaders need to succeed (assertion and control).

* Family demands: Women are still the ones who interrupt their careers to handle work/family trade-offs. Overloaded, they lack time to engage in the social networking essential to advancement.

Intervene on Multiple Fronts

Because of the interconnectedness of obstacles women face, companies that want more women leaders need to apply a variety of tactics simultaneously:

* Evaluate and reward women's productivity by objective results, not by "number of hours at work."

* Make performance-evaluation criteria explicit, and design evaluation processes to limit the influence of evaluators' biases.

* Instead of relying on informal social networks and referrals to fill positions, use open-recruitment tools such as advertising and employment agencies.

* Avoid having a sole female member on any team. Outnumbered, women tend to be ignored by men.

* Encourage well-placed, widely esteemed individuals to mentor women.

* Ensure a critical mass of women in executive positions to head off problems that come with tokenism. Women's identities as women will become less salient to colleagues than their individual competencies.

* Give women demanding developmental job experiences to train them for leadership positions.

* Establish family-friendly HR practices (including flextime, job sharing, and telecommuting). You'll help women stay in their jobs while rearing children, allow them to build social capital, and enable them eventually to compete for higher positions. Encourage men to participate in family-friendly benefits, too (for example, by providing paternity leave). When only women participate, their careers suffer because companies expect them to be off the job while exercising those options.

* Give employees with significant parental responsibilities more time to show they're qualified for promotion. Parents may need a year or two more than childless professionals.

* Establish alumni programs for women who need to step away from the workforce. Then tap their expertise to show that returning is possible. Consulting giant Booz Allen, for example, sees its alumni as a source of subcontractors.

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