G for Glass Ceiling

Posted on by Parul Thakur

If you think glass ceiling is only gender specific, you are not right. If you think in present times men and women are getting equal opportunities to be on top of the corporate ladder, you are again not right.

I do not believe in any regulatory guidelines that require presence of a woman in the board of directors but I do want to see as many deserving women in the board and here’s why. Last week an article caught my attention – and it spoke of a study of Wall Street analysts which reveals that men tend to be evaluated on potential, while women are judged on their actual performance. That’s where I see real problem in how men and women are compared.

When I was reading Sheryl Sandberg’s Lean In in 2013, I was blown away with the research that was done to present the book and those were some hard hitting research results. One of them was Success and Likeability are positively correlated for a man and negatively correlated for a woman. With women in teams and leadership, if they are great at getting things done, they are spoken of as aggressive however a man in the same scenario is believed to be a go-getter. The choice of words and they way we talk of them is not fair. Successful women are termed as lonely and one who doesn’t care enough for family but a man in a same place is a rock star and he whose family backs him up.

A woman is most of the time too hard on herself to even talk about how good she is at work and hence deserves a better salary or may be a next level. On the other hand, a man thinks high of himself to openly discuss all this. There are many examples and the intent is not to talk of all. The idea is to help women take charge of their careers. We need to work our best and promote our work. We need to have a say at the table and should be able to raise our hand for what we would like to do. We need to be responsible for individual growth and then we will be able to move past that glass ceiling.  The glass ceiling does exist but only we can get past it if we want to.

A lot more needs to  be done not for women but by women.

I am blogging from A to Z during April (#464 on the list) and the theme I have chosen is set on women. Some of the posts will be here for you to know and some will be to reflect and accept. Share your thoughts and let me know how things are going. There is always a room for improvement. 

49 thoughts on “G for Glass Ceiling”

  1. Great post! It’s disturbing that sometimes the same words are being interpreted positive when connected with men but negative with women. There is still a lot to be done- and I agree – sometimes women are womens worst enemy on this field. Im hooked on your theme – so enjoy reading your perspectives:-)

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  2. This is so true, Parul. *With women in teams and leadership, if they are great at getting things done, they are spoken of as aggressive however a man in the same scenario is believed to be a go-getter. The choice words and the negative bias is totally unfair. Once again, you have raised an important issue and conveyed your point very well. The thing that I like about how you write is your refreshing perspective. We all hear that a lot needs to be done for women. But actually, you put it perfectly. A lot needs to be done BY women too. Keep writing.
    *Shantala @ ShanayaTales*

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  6. Good point. Women often don’t get the credit they deserve at work. What people don’t realise is women generally do 2 jobs; don’t forget that housework is still largely a woman’s job . Besides women give birth to and rear children and are not given credit for juggling so many things at once. I think having a boss[ not always a woman] who can empathise is great because he/she can see the work you are really doing and being off from work for childcare[ as in when your child is ill] is not seen a negative. Also women themselves have to stop being apologetic about these situations and give themselves more credit than they probably do.

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  7. I remember applying for jobs in India, and the interviewers asking me about my family, my spouse, my parents, his-parents… On the contrary, when my husband applied, they asked only about his parents… Is this to be termed inequality ?? Though I answered to all the questions, since I thought I rather be nice, but actually I feel I am not obliged to answer these questions.. since they got nothing to do with showing how capable I am for this role.. another question that naturally follows- any kids? [Pause] I felt like asking, what are you going to decide based on this info? Does it make me a suitable candidate if I don’t have kids. And if I decide to have one, are you going to NOT offer me the role?

    Thanks for putting up this topic for discussion. Apart from being a woman, I think this should be a challenging topic when you wear your HR hat, too!

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    1. Thanks for sharing your thoughts Priyanka.
      I have heard of a case when a female candidate was rejected in some company cos the interviewers felt she was married for 2 years and can have a baby anytime now. Imagine!

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  11. What you have a said is very true; women will be judged by their performance, with all the limitations that women have( in terms of taking care of home and kids). women will complete all the work in the given time and would leave the office; on the other hand a man will stay up till late night without doing much work, all day taking breaks for smoking and tea and then may or may not complete the work, he will considered very hard working and committed by the boss, where as the women will be judged as someone who wants to escape work.. The man may even get a raise in his salary for his kind of commitment. The quality of the work will never be judged.. its a sad state of affairs, having experienced this in my own life.. I am glad to take responsibility for myself.

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  12. I had a friend who would complete her work within office hours and get home to her two young children but her male colleague would loiter about wasting time during the day and get working after office hours. He was praised while she was informally told that she wasn’t serious about her job, she put her family first.

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  13. men tend to be evaluated on potential, while women are judged on their actual performance – and with that the odds are certainly in their favour. Obviously men seem to spread the word more, how about we do too and turn the tables on them 🙂

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  14. Yesterday I was talking to a male friend, and I was actually shocked to hear about his perspective about women when they playing the role of a wife. It was actually disgusting. And he’s an educated professional but the mindset is not educated I think. And to note that these same woman is supposed to work at office and not be respected for her job but discriminated just because she’s a woman!

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    1. Sheethal – I know someone who is young 26 may be, who says, new mothers should leave job and focus on the child. Doing all activities together would not lead to success. So people will say and do all sorts of things. We should just focus on what we want from our lives.

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  15. I was surprised how hard it was to talk to my college students about it. Some of them flat-out refused to believe me! They said they see no difference at all (of course they were all white dudes). I had to re-structure my class plans to get more time to prove it to them that the difference does exist… before we could even start talking about how to solve it!

    @TarkabarkaHolgy from
    Multicolored Diary – Epics from A to Z
    MopDog – 26 Ways to Die in Medieval Hungary

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  16. Agree with you, Parul. When I was working, my manager at that time had a tough time recruiting girls because he was under the impression that girls will get married and leave the job. It was true in my case but does that matter really? As if boys/men would never leave a company for better offers!!! Our manager used to show double standards with boys and girls. It was so frustrating.

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  18. “A lot more needs to be done not for women but by women.” I liked this statement much impressive. regards http://
    YourWellWisherProgram.wordpress.com

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  19. Agree Parul! Its saddening to see that women aren’t given opportunities on the same scale. Personally, I feel men and women have their equally share of things to handle and when it comes to corporate scaling, my thoughts are treating everyone just based on performance and skills. Gender isn’t to be dragged everywhere, not here atleast! Good points raised and a wonderful post again Parul! Thanks for sharing!

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  20. I could relate to this post a lot since I have heard a lot of these statements before. Couldn’t agree more with the line – “Successful women are termed as lonely and one who doesn’t care enough for family.” Have seen this judgement being passed about the senior women folk at my earlier job. It is truly no one’s concern if such women have families or not and why they value work more than personal life. At the end of the day, they are doing their job ! 🙂

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  21. This resonates greatly for me, having spent many years in the corporate world (see my “H is for Hierarchy” post) dealing with this kind of crap. I was never shy about asking for a raise, but sadly, still lagged behind the men. It’s discouraging to learn this is still going on. 😦

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  22. I don’t really work in the corporate world so I haven’t experienced this but I know it’s a HUGE problem all over the world. The double standards are just awful, aren’t they? I think the word ‘bossy’ is also used in this manner — for women or girls, bossy = bad, for boys and men, it’s good.

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  23. Well said. Despite the potential and best efforts, a lot of barriers (visible and invisible) are there for women at workplace which prevents them from moving ahead! It is sad that different yardsticks are used to assess the work of men and women!

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