When Glass Ceiling Helps

Is Glass Ceiling always bad? This statement cannot be completely denied. According to a recent study, glass ceiling works from negative to positive as women move from below it to above it. From ages, women have been struggling and working hard to get into top management roles, working their way out of all obstacles to get into better and challenging roles. Once they overcome these barriers and reach a top notch position, they are perceived as better leaders then men at the same level, as a mark of extra perseverance, courage, and ability. On this side of glass ceiling, when women climb up the ladder to be in a leadership role, people perceive that these women might have worked twice as hard as the men at the same level, so once they get there, people think, ‘They are phenomenal’.

Lot of research has been done to understand women at lower and middle management level, but very little has been done to examine how women at the pinnacle of the organization are perceived. An interesting research, says that women at lower levels are either perceived as caring or competent, but not both. Lower level female employees are perceived to be communal but not competitive, while successful women at middle management are perceived as competent and not communal. Contrary to this view, women at top level are perceived to be caring as well as competent. Amazingly, people do not see these two things viz. caring and competent nature as mutually exclusive in women at top notch management roles. There could be many possible reasons. One of the reasons could be the competition. It may be one of the reasons that middle managers have other managers as competitors; this competition naturally highlights the competence and unfriendly aspects to other. However, when women reach top management level they have less competition and people get to see the other side of them. For instance, Hillary Clinton was seen as the toughest and unfriendly person when she was engaged in highly competitive presidential campaign, but when she occupied the position of secretary of state, she was seen as caring as well as communal. She was not only able to get her job done, but was also able to connect with many diverse groups of people.

Most of the women are perceived to be born with competent as well as communal qualities; they are seen as collectivist and feminist in approach. It could also be Galatea effect that helps women to perform better. As an ideal leader is seen to be participative, collaborative, willing to listen to their followers, and value their opinions. It is mix of these qualities due to which people perceive women as better leaders than men at top notch position. But, perceptions are just the initial thoughts or impressions that we form about people and tend to be stable and salient to contrary information.

Reference-

http://blogs.hbr.org/research/2010/10/when-the-glass-ceiling-helps.html

Sarita Sharma