Glass Ceiling - Case Study On Saudi Female Paramedic In Workplace

The concept that described barriers for women and minorities in a workplace is known as glass ceiling. Western feminism took form to oppose this discriminatory concept of glass ceiling in the 1970’s  (Connell, 2006). Equally qualified women and minorities faced these challenges and their growth towards the executive level was cut short. All biases against age, sex, cultural differences and organizational politics are examples of such challenges and these are common in most countries. 

Many researches have been done regarding ‘glass ceiling’, show casing the effects of the concept on women in a workplace. In 1986 The Wall Street Journal described glass ceiling simply as invisible barriers for females Carli and Eagly (2001). Women have already proven their ability to work at the top level but the glass ceiling still finds its way in blocking women from reaching top management levels  (Ryan & Haslam, 2005). Going beyond the workplace Kephart and Schumacher (2005) research shows that these invisible barriers also deprives the society of potential leaders that could benefit the society as whole, men on the other hand have more opportunities to become leaders in the workplace and in turn the society. It has been debated that men also consider women to not be motivated enough to work as hard as their male colleagues and also to have habits that effect their work negatively (Stamarski and Son Hing (2015). Chapman and Luthans (1975) concurred that all this can lead to three possible outcomes, first one being that the roles of women and men should be separate and according to their abilities, second is that both the genders support male leadership and third possibility being that men do not believe that women have the required ability to climb the corporate ladder.    

According to Powell there are six factors that could be considered to contain the invisible barriers for women’s growth in a workplace, these are 

1. Female’s status in a society are decided by a society that favours men
2. Stereotypes that consider men to be better managers
3. Men are better decision makers
4. Lack of belief in women continuing to climb to the top
5. Absence of proper system for promotions
6. Women have lesser lower management experience as compared to men (Powell, 1999) 

Similarly Oakley (2000) also used some factors and explained through statistics why women have secured fewer top management positions. Staltar, another American author, considered one of the factor for glass ceiling being the level of education (Staltar, 2002) which is found to be less effective as compared to the factors mentioned by Powell. 

Connell (2006) published her findings, based on 10 Australian organisations, regarding the glass ceiling which concluded that gender biases in the workplace still have a strong grip even for the sectors that have, in recent History, worked towards equal opportunity for both genders. Connell’s study included three interlinked circles using sequence which she derived from an interview method. The three circles were: (1) standard biases against women created the invisible barriers, (2) neglected women expertise and (3) removing the stereotypes set by the society is the way to remove this discrimination.