Chapter 10: Analytical Reflection

The “glass ceiling” is a barrier that enables women to glimpse the upper management position but not attain them – is still very much a reality; and, according to many researchers on this subject, it is likely to remain so until well into the twenty-first century. Most research on the topic demonstrates that the glass ceiling bars women from the top not because they lack the technical skills to make it to the top, but because of their gender. Women are denied positions largely as a result of male traditions, prejudices, stereotypes, and preconceptions of women.

If women made it through the glass ceiling, many consequences of inequality would disappear. If the structural functionalists are correct, women will gradually win promotions and pay increases that will move them onto the upper echelons of the bureaucratic work world and that will win them equality with men. According to the U.S. Department of Labor and Statics in its 2006 report, “At all levels of education women have fared better than men with respect to earnings.” Upper-class women may use a college education as a stepping-stone into the primary labor market. Their educational credentials and family background will help them get good positions. Working-class women, without family connections and educational opportunity, are likely to remain in the secondary labor market and fall further behind.

A few new words that I learned this chapter are comparable worth, Equal Rights
Amendment, and Beguines. Comparable worth is evaluating and rewarding different occupations equally if the work in each occupation requires the same level of skill and is of equal value to the employer. Equal Rights Amendment (ERA) is a proposed amendment to the
Constitution of the United States giving equal rights to women that was not ratified. Beguines are communes, existing during the Middle Ages, of peasant women who did not choose to marry and took vows of celibacy.

There is a wage differential between women and men in the workplace. There are several reasons for the continuing gap earnings. First, more women than men are entering the work force in low-paying occupations, such as clerical, service, or blue-collar work. Often, these jobs have no career lines, so women cannot advance to higher positions. Second, women are sometime paid less than men, even though they hold equivalent jobs. Third, people with low salaries receive smaller raises. A ten percent raise on $20,000 is smaller than a ten percent raise on $30,000, which the result income differentials increase even ass percentage increases remain equal. Women have been steadily returning to work for three decades. Surely, many women have gained considerable education and work experience during this time, and the gap in earnings between men and women should be closing more rapidly than it is.