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What is Glass Ceiling ?

Glass ceiling refers to the fact that a qualified person whishing to advance within the hierarchy of his/her organization is stopped at a lower level due to a discrimination most often based on sex or race. The glass ceiling refers thus to vertical discrimination most frequently against women in companies.

Evidence of the glass ceiling has been described as invisible, covert and overt. Root of the glass ceiling is gender-based barriers, commonly cited in the literature and noted anecdotally. These barriers run the gamut from gender stereotypes to preferred leadership styles and more on to tokenism in the high managerial ranks. Forces like socio-cultural, legal, personal, and organizational that affects the women’s rise to towards the upper position.

Glass ceiling is present all over the world, its vary country to country where degree of intensity of barriers are different. Religious factor, legal factor and economic factor are emerging factors those discriminate always women from men in developing as well as developed countries. Since equal opportunities for women and men but still women do not accomplishment the advancement because of the glass ceiling. For the women who have these opportunities and who are able to have a career, in emerging countries such as China or India, the glass ceiling they confront is no different from that confronted by women in the western world.

Barriers for Women at the Work Place:

• Male and female salary is different at the same job profile.
• Due to the more responsibility like child birth and child rearing gives the result of less experience at the workforce
• It is very tough for the women to come back on the employment after the pregnancy which creates a loop in their career

Origination of Glass Ceiling :

The term was first coined in March 1984 by Gay Bryant, the former editor of Working Woman magazine who was changing jobs to be the editor of Family Circle. In an Adweek article by Nora Frenkel, Bryant was reported as saying, “Women have reached a certain point—I call it the glass ceiling. They’re in the top of middle management and they’re stopping and getting stuck. There isn’t enough room for all those women at the top. Some are going into business for themselves. Others are going out and raising families. Also in 1984, Bryant used the term in a chapter of the book The Working Woman Report: Succeeding in Business in the 1980s

In 1991, the Federal Glass Ceiling Commission was established to gather information regarding the opportunities for the women and find out the barriers which create a problem for women at the top level of top management. Workers climb higher as they get promotions, pay raises, and other opportunities. In theory, nothing prevents women from rising as high as men. After the Women’s Liberation Movement and Civil Rights legislation of the 1960s, many people feel that discrimination is all in the past. However, in practice, there are still barriers

Indian Scenario :

Gender issues, particularly gender inequality and discrimination in academia relating to higher education, perhaps came under the spotlight for the first time in India in 1933 when Kamala Sohonie approached Sir C.V. Raman to pursue research in physics under his guidance. The Nobel Laureate and illustrious director of the Indian Institute of Science, Bangalore, turned the request down on the ground that ‘she was a woman’.

Sohonie ignored the refusal which was based on gender discrimination and went on a satyagraha in front of the director’s office. She was then admitted for one year on condition that her work for the year would not be recognised till the director was satisfied with the quality of her research and that her presence did not distract her male colleagues pursuing research.

Similarly, in 1937, Professor D.M. Bose, then Palit Professor of physics at Calcutta University, was reluctant to include Bibha Chowdhuri in his research group on the ground that he did not have suitable research projects to assign to women. Chowdhuri was unfazed and had her way. She joined D.M. Bose’s research group. Her work on cosmic rays in determining the mass of mesons is legendary.

These are only two well-known examples of gender discrimination in academics and there are many more such examples.

In 2018, Prof. Alessandro Strumia of Pisa University, a theoretical physicist who regularly works at CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research in Switzerland, claimed at a workshop organised by CERN that “physics was invented and built by men, it’s not by invitation” and that ‘male scientists were being discriminated against because of ideology rather than merit’ implying that women are less capable than men in physics research. CERN called the presentation “highly offensive” and suspended him pending an investigation. Ironically, a day later, Donna Strickland was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physics, for her work on lasers, and became the third woman to win a physics Nobel, after Marie Curie in 1903 and Maria Goeppert Mayer in 1963

The general bias against women which arose out of suspected capability of their intelligence and their mettle in undertaking the arduous task of research was quite common in the 20th century. Things have changed and the glass ceiling has been broken.

But how far have we progressed in the last 100 years in shedding this bias and ensuring that women are on a par with men in academic institutions?

Government’s incentives :

Despite the remarkable improvement in the participation of women in higher education and participation in the workforce over the past decades, progress has still been quite uneven. The Government of India has been ramping up efforts to remove gender inequality by providing incentives for women’s higher education.

Some of these initiatives such as the Gender Advancement for Transforming Institutions (GATI), i.e., a pilot project under the Department of Science and Technology to promote gender equity in science and technology, and Knowledge Involvement in Research Advancement through Nurturing (KIRAN), i.e., a plan under the Department of Science and Technology again to encourage women scientists in science and technology and also preventing women scientists from giving up research due to family reasons, are noteworthy. Some institutions are setting up creches so that the scientist mothers can carry on with their research work uninterrupted. Universities too are trying their best to be equal opportunity employers.

However, despite all these endeavours, there is still a gender bias that persists and which has not been removed fully. Women are still an under-represented population globally in hardcore science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM).

Women and STEM :

In this respect, India’s position in academia is disappointing.

According to available UNESCO data on some selected countries, India is at the lowest position, having only 14% female researchers working in STEM areas. But India is not very far behind many advanced countries in this aspect.

For example, Japan has only 16% female researchers, the Netherlands 26%, the United States 27% and the United Kingdom 39%.

Countries with a fairly good ratio in terms of an equal number of female and male researchers are South Africa and Egypt, with 45% female researchers each, and Cuba, at 49%. The highest number of female researchers are in Tunisia, Africa (55%) followed by Argentina (53%) and New Zealand (52%).

In India, about 43% of women constitute the graduate population in STEM, which is one of the highest in the world, but there is a downside to this; only 14% of women join academic institutions and universities.

Although male and female participation in graduate studies is comparable, the participation of women in research has dropped significantly (27% female as compared to 73% male). Thus, the visibility of female faculty in universities and research institutes is significantly lower.

But what is bothersome is that the percentage of women in faculty positions begins to shrink with each step up the ladder. The number decreases when it comes to a position involving decision-making. Even recognition of merit when it comes to women is sluggish when it comes to the total number of women fellows in the three science academies of India — 7% for the Indian Academy of Sciences (IAS), which was founded in 1934; 5% for the Indian National Science Academy (INSA), which was established in 1935, and 8% for the National Academy of Sciences India (NASI), which was founded in 1930.