The Glass Ceiling: How Women Compare to Men as Leaders

The proverbial glass ceiling seems to be a ubiquitous fixture within the halls of power. Given the opportunity, can women perform? Can they compete with their male counterparts?

The Glass Ceiling

In 1978, little known Marilyn Loden, a mid-level manager at New York Telephone Co., was asked to attend the Women’s Exposition in New York City after the company’s only female vice president couldn’t make it.

While there, Marilyn and four other women joined a panel titled “Mirror, Mirror on the Wall,” which was to be discussing how women, and their self-image, were to blame for their lack of advancement in the workforce.

At New York Telephone, Loden had been tasked with exploring why more women weren’t entering management positions, an issue that was beginning to gain some attention at the national level.

The data she had gathered up to this point, however, told her the problem went well beyond what women wore, said or how they acted at the work place. She felt, as she later explained, “there was an invisible barrier to advancement that people didn’t recognize.”