Glass Ceiling

13 Pages 3169 Words

e paid 72% of the salary paid to men, on average. The average salary for men is $81,920 and for women, $59,026. This means that men make, on average, nearly $23,000 per year more than women make in public relations.” Though this seems to be unfair, it is quite an improvement from the 60% of men’s salary that women were earning in the 1960s (Rigdon, 1993). Another advance (though it is minor) for women can be seen when looking at the findings of the Glass Ceiling Initiative, a special government study who said that as of March 31, 2000, women make up 12.5% of corporate officers. Not a very large number, even when you compare it to the advances from past years as shown by Business Week. According to Business Week, “women in 1997 represented 11.2% of officers at large corporations, an increase from the 10.6% reported in 1996 and the 8.7% in 1995.” According to this magazine, women are only making 68 cents for every dollar that men in their positions are making, which is even less than what was reported by PRWeekly. Even when women do progress to the top of the ladder, they are still not considered to be equal to men (as shown by their payment) although they are carrying out the same amount of responsibility and are under the same amount of stress.
So why is it that women are so underrepresented and underpaid? There are many theories or reasons. One reason given by Buzzanell is that executives are hesitant to promote women to higher positions for the fear of women failing. This failure would not only hurt the woman’s reputation, but also the reputation of the company. Another reason is the fact that gender stereotypes for females and their roles within the family are taken into consideration. Women are typically the main anchor of their families, needing to nurture their children, if they have any, and if a woman’s spouse needs to relocate, the woman will need to leave the organization. Gender roles such as bel...