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A glass ceiling is a political term used to describe "the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps minorities and

women from rising to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. 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. [8][9][10] 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 the same book, Basia [9] Hellwig used the term in another chapter. In a widely cited article in the Wall Street Journal in March 1986, term was used in the article's title: "The Glass Ceiling: Why Women Can't Seem to Break The Invisible Barrier That Blocks Them From the Top Jobs." The article was written by Carol Hymowitz and Timothy D. Schellhardt. The gender pay gap is the difference between male and female earnings. In 2008 the OECD found that the median earnings of female full-time workers were 17% lower than the earnings of their male counterparts and that "30% of the variation in gender wage gaps across OECD countries can be [11][12] explained by discriminatory practices in the labour market." The European Commission found that women's hourly earnings were 17.5% lower on average in the 27 EU Member States in [13] 2008. The female-to-male earnings ratio was 0.77 in the United States in 2009

As a 2010 Harvard Business Review report in conjunction with the Center for WorkLife Policy put it: Women enter the white-collar workforce in even greater numbers than men: 53 females for every 47 males. Yet as all employees in large corporations move from entry-level to middle management, and from mid- to senior-level positions, men advance disproportionately, outstripping women nearly two to one. At the very topmost rungs of the career ladder, men outnumber women nearly four to one. The research discovered that very few women have sponsors or colleagues senior enough to help them up the ladder: men are 46 per cent more likely than women to have a sponsor. Sheryl Sandberg, chief operating officer at Facebook, acknowledges in her book Lean In the importance of sponsors to her career. The first was when she was research assistant to Larry Summers, following him to the World Bank and the US Treasury, where at 29 she became his chief of staff.
Get the most out of sponsorship
Identify the right kind of sponsor: They should not be your line manager and ideally should be two levels more senior than you. A sponsor is not a friend or someone you want to emulate but a potential advocate for your career. Make sure you deliver:Securing a sponsor does not entitle a protg to automatic promotion. You need to work hard and deliver results. Unlike mentoring, this is a transactional relationship and the sponsor wants to gain from it too. Act professionally: In order to combat gossip about sexual favours and positive discrimination, conduct the relationship in a professional manner. Results will silence office gossips.

Sylvia Ann Hewlett, whose book Forget a Mentor, Find a Sponsor will be published in September, says sponsorship is a transactional exchange. To attract a sponsor, you need to be a star. The senior person has to believe in you and believe you will contribute to their success. She says sponsorship is really a way of giving a term to

something that men have benefited from historically patronage and old-boys networks. Women are very good at friendship at work, says Ms Hewlett, who heads the Center for Talent Innovation, a US diversity and talent management think-tank. But they find it very hard to use it. Men dont have that problem. They see relationships as seamless. They put a different value on relationships at work. The only thing that matters is power. Women instinctively go for the wrong person they tend to go for a leader they want to emulate, a role model. They need to go for someone with power. Also, they tend to underestimate the significance of patronage: Women think it should be about performance. They want it to be pure meritocracy. Danica Dilligard, partner at Ernst & Young, the professional services firm, says women tend to be over-mentored and under-sponsored. They get plenty of advice and dont get clear support. Kerrie Peraino, senior vice-president of international human resources at American Express, the credit card company, points out that sponsors have much more to lose and potentially gain than mentors. A sponsor ends up using their influence and political capital to help your career advancement. A mentor doesnt stake their reputation on a mentee...And the fact that Ive said yes to a mentor doesnt refl ect on me. Sponsorship carries with it a high risk and high reward. A sponsor should also gain from the relationship: Ms Hathorn points out that an advocate may benefit from having sponsored people across regions and departments. Randall Peterson, professor of organisational behaviour at London Business School, says it is better if a sponsor is not your direct-line supervisor because they might have an interest in keeping you and inhibiting your promotion Opinion is split over whether it is more effective to have a formal programme such as PwCs or to let it take place informally. Shaheena Janjuha-Jivraj, senior lecturer at Henley Business Schools Centre for Entrepreneurship, believes the relationship will fail if a sponsor takes on the role as a box-ticking exercise in the hope of proving their diversity credentials. A 2011 McKinsey Quarterly report identified two types of sponsor that may prove more damaging than helpful to women: the relentless coach, who pushes the person to breaking point, and the devils advocate, whose constant questioning drains confidence and energy.

Glass ceilings and the law: unconscious bias must be acknowledged


Almost 40 years after the Sex Discrimination Act came into force, women are still struggling to be promoted into senior posts in most businesses. The Davies Report has produced a flurry of appointments for women into non-executive roles, but the pipeline for senior executive appointments remains overwhelmingly male. Yet women are out performing men at university and, in many sectors, at the graduate recruitment stage. So what happens when it comes to the stage in a woman's career where appointments are being made to the senior posts which pay the big money and carry all the status?

Conventional wisdom has it that women are distracted by the burden of childcare and make worklife balance decisions that favour family over career. It is undoubtedly true that long office hours and lack of flexible working options do play a part, but is this the whole story? Many commentators consider that unconscious bias has just as much of a role to play in keeping the glass ceiling remains stubbornly in place, and a recent discrimination case in the employment tribunal has provided a good illustration of this. The case concerned a claim of race rather than sex discrimination, but the principles emerging from it are absolutely relevant to the gender debate. A woman of African-Caribbean origin, Ms Francis, was passed over for promotion in favour of a white, also female, candidate. She was not able to show any evidence at all of overt racial bias. There was no history of racial slurs or poor treatment related to race. Her claim, however, succeeded. Why? The way that the law operates is that once a claimant has shown a difference in treatment (ie not being promoted in this case) and a difference in race, the burden passes to the employer to explain why the different treatment was not related to race. If there had been clear evidence that the white candidate had scored much better in the selection process, the case would have failed. However, the evidence before the tribunal showed that the all-white panel had taken an inconsistent approach to scoring. Also, significantly, the tribunal accepted that there was a de facto glass ceiling in place which prevented non-white employees from achieving more senior roles. Three black employees gave evidence that informal sponsorship and encouragement was given to white staff, but not to black staff. The tribunal's conclusion was that the employer had failed to show that its decision to promote the white candidate was not influenced by race. It's clear from this case that leaving these issues to be resolved by the passage of time, or relying on the old chestnut that your business is ameritocracy, could actually be creating a risk of discrimination claims. The whole point about unconscious bias is that it's unconscious, and all the equal opportunities policies in the world are not going to address that. Discrimination these days isn't about anything as crude as racial or gender-based insults, as the Francis case demonstrates (although that's not to say that they've vanished altogether). It's about people making decisions which are unconsciously influenced by affinity bias, ie a tendency to favour "people like us". If the people making decisions about promotion are mostly male and mostly white, the likelihood is that they will be sponsoring, encouraging and promoting people in their own image without even realising that this is what they are doing. Many employers are now choosing to take positive action, using transparent promotion processes, unconscious bias training and targets for parity in senior roles to tackle the problem, rather than relying on a meritocratic culture to break down the glass ceiling on its own. Either way, the issue needs to be confronted head-on if an employer is to have any chance of persuading a tribunal (and its own staff) that its culture and processes are not tainted by bias. Unconscious bias is something that affects everyone, and no one pretends that it's easily eradicated. But realising that it does exist and that it is potentially creating business risk is a good starting point

THE ECONOMIST

The expression the glass ceiling first appeared in the Wall Street Journal in 1986 and was then used in the title of an academic article by A.M. Morrison and others published in 1987. Entitled Breaking the Glass Ceiling: Can Women Reach the Top of America's Largest Corporations?, it looked at the persistent failure of women to climb as far up the corporate ladder as might be expected from their representation in the working population as a whole. The idea behind the expression was that a transparent barrier, a glass ceiling, blocked them. Invisible from the bottom, when women started their careers, it was steely strong in stopping them attaining equality with men later on. It helped explain the fact that in large corporations in Europe and North America women rarely came to account for more than 10% of senior executives and 4% of CEOs and chairmen. A secondary issue is that of women's pay. There is evidence that even when women do reach the highest levels of corporate management, they do not receive the same pay as men for the same job; a figure of 75% is often quoted. And rather than getting better over time, the position seems to be deteriorating. One survey found that women executives in the United States were earning an even lower percentage of their male counterparts' remuneration in 2000 than they were in 1995. So worried was the American government about the issue that in 1991 it set up something called the Glass Ceiling Commission, a 21-member body appointed by the president and Congress and chaired by the labour secretary. The commission focused on barriers in three areas: the filling of management and decision-making positions; skills-enhancing activities; and compensation and reward systems. The Glass Ceiling Commission completed its mandate in 1996 and was disbanded. Needless to say, the problem did not disappear with it. One of the first women to head a major Japanese company, when asked in 2005 what had changed least in Japanese business in the previous 20 years, said: The mindset of Japanese gentlemen. Several theories have been presented to explain the glass ceiling: The time factor. One theory is that the cohorts of first-class female graduates have not yet had time to work through the pipeline and reach the top of the corporate hierarchy. Qualifications for a senior management post usually include a graduate degree and 25 years of continuous work experience. In the early 1970s, when today's senior managers were graduating, fewer than 5% of law and MBA degrees were being awarded to women. Nowadays, women gain over 40% of all law degrees in the United States and 35% of MBAs. Motherhood. Sometimes the blame for the glass ceiling is laid at the door of motherhood. Women are distracted from their career path by the need to stay at home and rear children. They are unable to undertake the tasks required to reach the top; for example, extended trips abroad, wearing air miles like battle medals, long evenings entertaining clients and changing plans at short notice. Lack of role models. In her 1977 book Men and Women of the Corporation, Rosabeth Moss Kanter (see article) suggested that because managerial women are

so often a token female in their work environment they stand out from the rest. This makes them (and their failures) much more visible, and exaggerates the differences between them and the dominant male culture. Some authors recently have gone so far as to challenge the metaphor of the glass ceiling, arguing that it presents the image of a one-off blockage somewhere high up the career ladder, whereas in reality there is a whole series of obstacles along the way that hold women back.
INDIAN PICTURE
One reason for male dominance, says Rajesh Chakrabarti, an assistant professor of finance at the Indian School of Business in Hyderabad, is cultural. "Two thirds of our top 500 companies belong to family business groups and their succession typically progresses with a strong male preference," he says. "Among general executives, too, family responsibilities often hurt career progressions of women in the early 30s and they lose ground to their male rivals who rise to the top." Prof Chakrabarti says there are only 766 females out of 14,104 directors among 1,690 Clause 49-compliant Indian companies.These companies are required to submit a quarterly compliance report to the stock exchange. A 2009 survey entitled Creating Women Business Leaders: Differentiating Styles of Women Executives, conducted by Women in Leadership and KPMG, said women bring substantive diversity to company boards in terms of their composition, skill sets and experiences. Companies that nurture leadership qualities of their women executives see better performance and financial results, it added. "Our research evidence reveals that women leaders are self-critical of their own strengths and weaknesses and tend to rebound gracefully from setbacks," said Sangeeta Singh, the executive director for human resources at KPMG. "They tend to be intuitive crisis managers enabling fair and sound judgement. Further, they drive a democratic and inclusive approach by building an ecosystem and nurturing talent." Last year, a report on the Asia-Pacific region by the UN Development Programme noted that fewer than 35 per cent of women in India and Pakistan do paid work.

Meet the War Lady: Royal Navy appoints first ever woman commander of a frontline warship
It has a proud history dating back 500 years. But the Royal Navy will break new ground today by placing a woman in charge of a frontline warship. Commander Sarah West, 40, spoke of her delight at joining HMS Portland, a 5,000-ton Type 23 frigate that is prepared for 'total warfare'.

An all-woman first batch for Indian Navy


The first all-woman batch of Indian Navy observers passed out from the Observer School in Kochi on Saturday signalling a milestone in the integration of women in the armed forces. The four women officers Sub-Lieutenants Priya Jayakumar, Santhosh Kumari, Swetha S and Sandhya Chauhan were among nine officers including one from the Sri Lankan Navy who were awarded Wings at an passing out parade by Commodore M R Ajay Kumar VSM, Naval Officerin-Charge, Kerala. Wings are worn by Naval aviators on the chest as part of their uniform.

During the course, the officers were trained in tactics employed in air warfare, anti-submarine warfare and the exploitation of electronic intelligence systems in addition to the basic training in air navigation and flying procedures. Sub-Lieutenant Swetha who was adjudged first in overall order of merit is from Bangalore. These officers will now join maritime reconnaissance and anti-submarine warfare aircraft of the Navy.

Women were inducted as short service commissioned officers in the navy for the first time in 2009. Observers are posted on aircraft to take care of navigation. So far, they have been confined to fixed wing aircraft only.

FIRST BATCH

on July 13, 1992, a batch of 22 girls began their naval training at INS Mandovi in Goa to become the first commissioned officers in the Indian defence forces. Prior to 1992, the Indian Navy enlisted women only in the role of doctor. "The Navy was the first to commission women and the Army followed later, so we were the first batch in the defence forces," recollects Cdr Vijaya Bopana from Chennai. The girls-who were in their early twenties then-joined the Navy straight from college as engineering or technical graduates or as post-graduates. Two men were also part of the batch. They trained for six months and while doing so practically "forgot they were women". "We had no special privileges as women," remembers Bopana. Thereafter they were posted to different parts of the country. Some served seven years and left as Lieutenants, some extended service to 10 and quit as Lt Commanders while five of the women gave 14 years of service before completing their commission in 2006 and leaving as Commanders. They acquired management degrees at reputed institutes along the way and are now at different stages of their lives. Most of the girls hailed from non-defence families but half of them ended up marrying their fellow male officers. Some have turned entrepreneurs, others educators, a few are now lawyers. But all are settled, says Lt Nishu Miglani who lives in Mumbai and is the director of her own consultancy firm. Miglani narrates: "The Navy gave us the best foundation to become well-minded professionals and achieve goals in corporate life later on." It helped us with time management, discipline and outlook of life, she added.

The most memorable moment of her time in service "was being awarded the best lady officer on November 28, 1992, by the then defence minister Sharad Pawar". Bopana narrates that being the first batch, the women faced "gender sensitivity problems as jawans were not ready to take orders from women, or accept us as equals". She feels the approach towards women has now changed and women are more accepted in the defence forces and are even being given permanent commissions. "Our batches and the subsequent batches fought a lot for this (permanent commissions). And these efforts have paid off," says the woman who now heads HR in Reliance Retail's lifestyle division at Bangalore. Women are being taken for combat roles too, she adds. "There needs to be a more open policy. If women are deemed fit to serve for 14 years, why not more years," Bopana wonders, adding that a change in mindsets is needed to see women serving at higher positions. Having represented India in badminton, Bopana says her sports background inspired her to join the Navy. In January 1995, she was among the first women to lead the Naval contingent at the Republic Day parade and cherishes this as well as the commendation for exemplary service from the Commander in Chief. She credits the Navy for instilling a strong working culture, mental toughness and resultoriented approach in the women and a strong value system. "Navy helps people bridge gaps and brings everyone under the same band," she observes. Lt Cdr Meenu Tiwari, attributed her "zeal to serve the nation" as the driving force behind her decision to enlist. She was an education officer in the Navy and continues to be an educationist as the principal of the CRPF public school in Delhi. "Training at the naval academy groomed us well. We owe a lot to the Navy," she notes. Cdr Puja Chhabra Sharma, who is now assistant dean, international programmes at Ansal University, Delhi, said for her, it was the "love for the uniform" that motivated her towards the Navy. "We brought glamour to the white uniform," she chuckles. Sharma recalls being the first woman to do 'jack-staying' a risky naval distress exercise involving crossing over from one ship to another on a rope while both ships are in motion. Among the others who managed to make it to the reunion, Cdr Jaya Kapoor is now a consultant with Jindal SAW; Lt Smita Gaidhani is a practicing advocate in the Bombay high court and an assistant government pleader for the state of Maharashtra; Lt Divya Bapna is an administrative officer at TIFR, Mumbai; Lt Cdr Asshi Shamin recently quit as operations manager at an MNC; Lily Shama George is a homemaker; Lt Geeta Kohli Sekhon is a UN consultant (human trafficking and child abuse) in Kochi and Cdr

Prasanna R is senior manager at TCS, Chennai. Lt Manju Chauhan Singh says she is now "the CEO of her sweet home"

Smooth Sailing
In her crisp white uniform and smart cap, Rear Admiral Nirmala Kannan is a picture of poise and grace. In addition to the formal duties of a Naval officer, she is a sensitive doctor, a happy homemaker, a music buff and a sports person. Her distinction lies in the fact that she has been the first woman in several official capacities in the Indian Navy, a capable trendsetter! Hailing from Meempat tharavadu in Malappuram, Nirmala is the sister of Foreign Secretary Nirupama Rao, and Asha Gill, a doctor living in Kuala Lumpur. The daughter of an Army officer, Nirmala was always an outdoor kid. Nirmala says she was very different from older sister, Nirupama. She remembers: My mom would give us 10 sums to do on Sundays. I would do three and be out climbing trees or playing gilli danda, unlike her studious eldest sister who would complete all the sums. While Nirupama was ladylike and gifted, Nirmala was pretty unorthodox. Perhaps it was her unorthodox nature that saw her choosing a career as a doctor in the Navy, at a time when women stuck to more conventional lifestyles. It was her father's wish that one of his daughters join the Services that prompted her to choose the Navy. Joining the Navy It was a last minute decision to join the Navy instead of the Army. After having studied in different schools across India in Pune, Lucknow and Bangalore, she completed her medical studies from Aurangabad in Maharashtra. There were five girls in a class of 110 but there was no gender discrimination. This gender equality is probably the reason for Nirmala entering a male bastion by choice. She joined the Navy in 1977 at the INHS-Asvini, the flagship hospital of the Navy in Mumbai. In 1992 women were inducted into the three arms of the Services. A gender sensitisation programme was initiated for all the men- officers, sailors and other categories. Nirmala had a major role to play in that task. She was selected to be guide and mentor to the first batch of 22 women officers, for a smooth induction. It was a job well done and she was awarded the VSM (Vishisht Seva Medal) the following year. Time and again she has faced the challenge of being a woman in a man's domain but to her it has been smooth sailing. She was the first woman from the Navy at the Defence Services Staff College course, the only woman among 400 officers, but she says, I never felt out of place. Her only guideline has been to conduct oneself with dignity. Her first posting had her working in the Naval hospital in Mumbai where she enhanced her medical and administrative skills. As a gynaecologist she was on call but she also had to shoulder administrative responsibilities. She believes that her commanding officers there moulded her personality by giving her the toughest jobs. It's quite obvious that she matched their expectations

for she moved to the prestigious Armed Forces Clinic in Delhi. Her duties increased manifold and she was exposed to new challenges. The hallmark of a doctor is good communication. In the course of her work, she forged a close friendship with artist Anjolie Ela Menon who encouraged Nirmala to pursue her innate music talent, which was a pastime during her student days. Many roles In turn Nirmala, who keeps a beautiful home, says she learnt the art of decor from the artist. I always feel you can be a woman in uniform and have a soft feminine side to you, adding that she enjoys wearing saris, cooking and is especially good at preparing a good naadan' meal. A working woman has no excuse for not keeping a good home, she feels, adding that the unflinching support of her husband helps her blend several roles successfully. Her husband, Vice Admiral B. Kannan, whom she met through her music, has been a pillar of support. Her medical expertise by now saw her moving more into an administrative role. Running a hospital well is an important task and I am constantly in touch with patient care. For a doctor the patient comes first. As Surgeon Captain in 2002, she commanded INS Kalyani in Vishakapatanam, and in 2004 got selected for a course at the NDC (National Defence College), Delhi. Here too she was the first lady officer from all the three wings of the Armed Forces to attend this prestigious course. It was another feather in her cap and she was exposed to nonmilitary matters. This was followed by her taking over as Director General Armed Forces Medical Services, till 2008, after which she returned to where she had begun at Asvini in Mumbai, which, by now, had expanded to an 825-bed hospital. The wheel, it seems, was drawing to a full circle. When I joined the services I never thought I would reach anywhere, become anything I just took one day at a time... it feels good,' she says softly, her light eyes gleaming with satisfaction. In Kochi as Command Medical Officer, Southern Naval Command she oversees the different hospitals that come under its purview. Her job entails travel and constantly attending to hospital-related duties. Her family too depends on her expertise heavily as she turns tele-doc for them. Nirupama makes the first call to me when she is unwell. Her aged parents live with her. Away from the line of duty, Nirmala believes in living life to the fullest having done white water rafting, all the 22 rapids at age 53. She plays golf, badminton and recently took part in an all-woman car rally, where her team came second. For the past twoand-a-half years she has been learning to play the piano, because learning music in old age wards off senile dementia. To women in general she has a word of advice: take care of yourself, only then can you take care of the family. That's the prescription and an order from Surgeon Rear Admiral Nirmala Kannan.

HILARY CLINTON

The whole world is watching: Will Hillary run? Clinton has a CV full of firsts: She is the only first lady to become a U.S. senator turned viable presidential candidate turned secretary of state. Now a private citizen, she holds her position as one of the most powerful women on the planet with all bets on that she will be the 2016 Democratic presidential candidate and likely next leader of the free world

Sheryl Sandberg
Facebook's COO incited a new conversation on feminism in the workplace with her March 2013 book, "Lean In: Women, Work and the Will to Lead." The manifesto sold nearly 150,000 copies in its first week and has held the top non-fiction spot on bestseller lists since. But Sandberg's biggest success of the year may have happened right in Menlo Park. After adding ads to its mobile news feed, Facebook earned more U.S. mobile revenue than any other publisher in 2012

Christine Lagarde

Managing Director, International Monetary Fund

The first woman to run the 188-country financial organization spent much of her first two years on the job battling the debt crisis in Europe and calling for ailing global economies to accelerate steps for stable growth.

Indra Nooyi

CEO, PepsiCo

Virginia Rometty

CEO, IBM

Oprah Winfrey
Entrepreneur, Personality

The world's only African-American billionaire has attracted stars from Lance Armstrong to Rihanna for sit-down confessionals on her OWN network

Meg Whitman

CEO, Hewlett-Packard

Aung San Suu Kyi


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Chair and Parliamentarian, National League for Democracy, Burma

ess than two years after being released from nearly two decades under house arrest, Suu Kyi was elected to Burma's parliament in an election where her National League for Democracy party took 43 of 45 open seats.

Sri Mulyani Indrawati

Managing Director, World Bank

Chanda Kochhar

Managing Director and CEO, Icici Bank

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