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The glass ceiling has
been with us for a while
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and is a very popular
metaphor still.
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So you'll read it in
journalism in particular,
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but also in the social science
literature, the metaphor used.
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I think that it is
not a good metaphor.
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We certainly still
have prejudice
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against women in leadership
roles in various ways.
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So you could say,
well, glass ceiling
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is a metaphor for prejudice.
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But if you look at it in a
more precise or detailed way,
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at the notion of
a glass ceiling,
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I think we can see
how misleading it is.
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For one thing, it
suggests that the barriers
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are way up there
in the hierarchy so
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that a woman would,
of course, have
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a career in the
same way as a man.
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But then she gets near the top.
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She thinks she's going
to become executive vice
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president or maybe CEO.
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And then whoops, she
finds out she can't.
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She didn't realize that before,
according to this notion.
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But she hits her head
on the glass ceiling.
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So that's profoundly misleading
because the challenges
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that women face in having
successful careers are not just
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at the top.
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They are all the way
along the career,
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from step one through
step two, step
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three, all the way
through the career.
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So the reason you
have so few women
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at the top of some
hierarchies, such as being
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a chief executive officer
in the Fortune 500,
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is that there are few women at
that level right before that.
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So women progressively
drop out of the hierarchy.
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It isn't that the women
are there in great numbers
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and then can't get
to that upper level.
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It's a progressive
drop-out that occurs
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for many different reasons.
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So it is a rather odd
metaphor, actually,
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in terms of not
capturing the phenomenon.
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It isn't anybody
systematically misleading them,
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but there is the idea
that there is no prejudice
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and that they have
equal opportunity.
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And they've lived a
life, through school
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and through college, with
equal opportunity fairly much.
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So it seems that that's true.
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But then they don't
look out and see, well,
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women are systematically
not doing as
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well in their careers as men--
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dropping out more, not
rising nearly as fast.
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And so I think that's not that
salient to many young women
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because they're not
in the career yet.
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And then they may think, well,
that's a different generation.
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We have equal opportunity.
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And then they enter
the labyrinth.
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Ask those women 10 years later
when their male colleagues
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very often have moved forward
faster than they have.
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Or perhaps they're at
home, raising children,
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and may never get
back to anything
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like a fast-track career.
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And so then they have a
different set of ideas about it
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through experience.
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So the problem is to inform
younger women, in particular,
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about the labyrinth so
that they will approach it
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thoughtfully and not
have regret later on,
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but yet not be discouraging.
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So it's kind of discouraging
to tell young women,
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no, we don't have
equal opportunity,
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and let me tell you why.
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But the labyrinth idea is meant
to be in that middle range--
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that, hey, you have challenges
that your young-men colleagues
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don't have, but it's a
labyrinth, not a glass ceiling.
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So maybe if you
figure it out and are
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very thoughtful
about it and learn
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about the contours
of the labyrinth,
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you will reach the
goals that you've
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set for yourself in your life.
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They're usually very smart.
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They have thought it through.
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I mean, there's accidental
features of careers,
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of course, opportunities that
happen to come to a person.
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But I think those women
have been thoughtful
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about their careers, and
they've made choices that
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were enabling in various ways.
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One of the biggest challenges
for women in terms of career
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is family, of course.
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That's the obvious.
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And that comes often
relatively young when
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you have all your training,
you have your MBA or your law
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degree or whatever.
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And then you're
going out on a career
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just like your male colleagues.
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And then, for many women,
there those decisions
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about marriage
and child-bearing,
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which, depending on
how that's managed,
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can be quite disabling for
the career because they often
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involve moving off
the fast track.
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Either some women
would drop out,
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and then other women would
want to go part-time,
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understandably.
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But then they're
off the fast track.
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So you see women who are CEOs.
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Occasionally,
they've dropped out
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and stayed home for a few
years, but that's very rare.
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Usually, they either
have not had children.
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Or if they do, they've just
managed it in other ways.
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Perhaps they have one of those
husbands who shares equally
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or whatever, or
they've managed to--
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many women manage
to have families
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and successful careers, but
it's much more challenging often
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for women than men
because women ordinarily
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have more responsibility
for child-rearing.
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So that's a challenge
that comes very early.
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Perhaps many women
don't realize that
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in studies that have been
done, not managing that well
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is very damaging to careers.
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It's hard, after
dropping out, to get back
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to a successful career.
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It shouldn't be.
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The on-ramp should be there.
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But often, it's not.
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And then the part-time work,
it should be good-quality work
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that could result in promotion.
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But in fact, that's
not the case.
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Ordinarily, it's
dumbed-down work
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compared to what you
would have if you
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were in a full-time career.
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And ordinarily, there
are limited, if any,
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promotion possibilities.
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So you're on that side track.
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Well, maybe you can
get back on again.
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But your male colleagues who
didn't do that are way ahead,
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and there's this whole
cohort of young, eager men
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and women coming along too.
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So that's just one of the
turns of the labyrinth,
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is how the family
responsibilities
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are managed by a couple.