More Cracks in the Glass Ceiling?

A new Harvard Business School analysis nds progress is being made toward workplace gender equity but it’s still slow going

- By Colleen Ammerman, Boris Groysberg

For the better part of a decade, we have been collecting data about the hurdles to women's career advancement. In particular, we've been interested in understanding how women who have made it through the gauntlet of gender bias, subtle discrimination, and stereotypic assumptions about their capabilities that we called the office obstacle course in our recent book, Glass Half-Broken: Shattering the Barriers That Still Hold Women Back at Work-assess the phenomena that disadvantage them and their peers.

One way we've investigated their views is through a series of surveys of female executives who are enrolled in women's leadership programs. These surveys allow us to take the pulse of women who have had long careers and thus experienced an array of obstacles, including those, such as the motherhood penalty (disadvantages that working mothers experience in pay and perceived competence compared to men and to women who don't have children), that tend to crop up at distinct career stages. These women have seen the leadership pipeline shrink around them as female colleagues exited or were stymied in their growth. They've seen the glacial pace of progress toward gender parity, too.

In the words of one of the women who responded to our most recent survey, “While we have a goal of parity in candidates, the results show that is not working. Yes, we can say we look at men and women, but the men overwhelmingly get the job.”