Class, gender, and parental values in the 1990s - Response to Baxter and Wright

The glass ceiling is a very popular metaphor among gender scholars. It has become a shorthand expression for describing the myriad obstacles that prevent women from being promoted to high positions of authority, prestige, and pay. So it is significant when Gender & Society publishes an article debunking its implicit claims. In their recent article, Janeen Baxter and Erik Olin Wright (2000) argue that the metaphor of the glass ceiling does not accurately depict the barriers that women confront in the workforce, in their study of three countries, they find little evidence to support the idea that discrimination against women increases as they move into top-level management positions. They suggest that barriers for women actually may be greater at the lower levels of job hierarchies than at the top. It is debatable whether they have correctly defined the glass ceiling, however. They write, "Taken literally, the metaphor of the glass ceiling implies the existence of an impermeable barrier that blocks the vertical mobility of women. Below this barrier women are able to get promoted; beyond this barrier, they are not" (p. 276). To test for the existence of the glass ceiling, they examine whether "the barriers to managerial promotions become increasingly severe for women compared to men as they move up the hierarchy" (p.227).