Breaking Through the Glass Ceiling: A Business Action PlanEven though the newspapers are reporting that women have come a long way and are successful in the corporate world, women are banging into a glass ceiling that is "so subtle that it is transparent, yet so strong that it prevents women from moving up the corporate hierarchy" (Morrison, 2005). Women can see the high-level corporate positions but are kept from reaching the top. According to Morrison and her colleagues, the glass ceiling is not simply a barrier for an individual, based on the person/s inability to handle a higher-level job. Rather, the glass ceiling applies to women as a group who are kept from advancing higher because they are women (Morrison, 2005). This business action plan will present a few numbers from the workforce and offer up a few solutions to the problem.
Workforce DataWomen constitute 40% of all executive and administrative posts, up from 24% in 1976.
English: This is a chart illustrating the inequali...
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20110811-NodeXL-Twitter-gannettHowever, they are still restricted mostly to the middle and lower level positions with the senior levels almost entirely male. A 1990 study of the top Fortune 500 companies by Mary Ann Von Glinow of the University of Southern California, showed that "women were only 2.6% of corporate officers (the vice presidential level up)." Of the Fortune Service 500, only 4.3% of corporate officers were women. This is astounding as women make up 6l% of all service workers. Even more astounding is that these numbers have shown little improvement in the 25 years that these statistics have been tracked" (Morrison, 2005). This means that at the present rate of increase, it will be 2466 before women reach equality with men in the executive suite.
This scenario is not any better on corporate boards. Only 4.5% of the Fortune 500 industrial directorships are...