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Glass Ceiling

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Female Managers Struggle To Break the Glass Ceiling
Thirty-two years ago, Pat Chapman-Pincher was excelling in her first job and applied to become a management trainee. Her company turned her down and was quite open about the fact that she was being rejected because she was a woman.
"We went around in circles," recalls Ms. Chapman-Pincher, now senior vice president, global accounts, at WorldCom Inc. "They said no. I said I was leaving. They said they wanted me to stay and I replied, 'Put me on your management trainee team.' They said no again. Eventually I left to join IBM, which did offer management training for women."
It's hard to imagine such a situation in most large European companies these days. With employment at record levels in most of the industrialized world, multinational companies have become increasingly aware that ignoring half of their potential talent pool is a losing strategy.
Yet for every Marjorie Scardino – the chief executive of Pearson PLC – there are hundreds of female middle-level mangers who haven't been able to break the so-called glass ceiling, which prevents women from moving into upper management even as it permits those opportunities to be seen clearly. "Even as women have made enormous advances ... they are still a small share of all top-level corporate jobs," says Saskia Sassen, professor of political economy at the London School of Economics.
Will the changes sweeping business as a result of globalization, pan-European consolidation and new technologies really help women to become more successful in reaching the top ranks? On balance, female business leaders seem to think so.
First, consolidation and globalization are radically changing management styles in ways that could benefit women employees. For instance, there is growing demand for so-called soft skills such as communication ability, worker sensitivity and emotional

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