The Glass Ceiling - Fact or Fiction?

In my years of working for the man, I have never found there to be a glass ceiling, although perhaps I’ve never made it high enough to see it.  Assuming there is one, I would argue that while it may be breakable, many working women choose not to get bloodied up in the shattering glass.  To explore this further, I’ve segmented working women into 3 stereotypes:

1. Hard core ambitious women
2. Ambitious yes, …but I need to be home by 6:00 
3. I’m happy in my cube, leave me alone

The first two categories are really the women who would run into a glass ceiling – so for the sake of brevity, I’ll leave the 3^rd category out (at least for now anyway).  This first group includes women who are going to be successful period.  They most likely don’t have kids, or have fulltime help raising their kids (and there’s nothing wrong with that!  One of my personal goals is to retire and have a nanny).  These are the women that are either running companies, or about to.  Their golf handicap is under 10, they can drink all night at sales meetings and present brilliantly at 7:00AM the next morning, and they can calculate changes in EPS before their first cup of coffee.  They’re brilliant, they’re successful and usually have amazing designer clothes.   But how common are they?  I would argue less common than the second category. 

I think women from the “Yes, I’m ambitious, but I need to be home by 6:00” are probably a bit more common.  While these women are ambitious, there are obstacles in their way.  The biggest one being their life.  This can include kids, pets, sushi-making classes or training for an Iron Man.  They’ve made a decision, conscious or not, to sacrifice corporate success for work-life balance.  And with this comes ramifications.  Ramifications being that they’ll never be as successful OR as well-dressed as their best friend the CEO.  Additionally, they may question whether or not they could have been as successful and chances are they might even drive a mini-van.  Enough said.  So while these women, and I hypothesize them to be more common than their ambitious counterparts, won’t make it to the top, it has nothing to do with being held back by a glass ceiling.  It has to do with the choices they made. 

So what’s the answer here?  Pick your path and move steadily forward--either in high fashion corporate attire or a mini-van with remote control doors.