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IZOLDA TAKÁCS: THROUGH A GLASS DARKLY
What is currently at the forefront of the problem is that more women have
been placed in leadership positions than before, so it may seem that the system
is currently fair and that advancement is based merely on merit and the hier¬
archy seems easy to permeate.*
One of the questions to be answered in the field of research since the 1990s
— and what this chapter is about — was the question of why this change is so
slow for women’s proportions and why the role of women in top level leadership
is symbolic, despite them having the same qualification level and skills as their
male colleagues, and despite the proportion of women in higher education
being higher (60—40).5
The current state of affairs is clearly due to gender segregation. Women in
the labour market are burdened by both vertical and horizontal segregation.**
By horizontal segregation, we mean the different positions of men and women
in different economic fields, sectors, occupations, which are referred to as the
‘glass walls’ metaphor.
Vertical segregation, which is also spoken of with the term ‘glass ceiling’,®
includes barriers of advancement on the occupational hierarchy. This phenome¬
non results in the proportion of women being significantly lower when we look at
higher positions. This means that even with the same professional skills, women
have a much lower probability of a career than men. The term ‘glass ceiling’ first
appeared in the literature in 1986, when Carol Hymowitz and Timothy D. Schell¬
hardt made a report titled The Glass-Ceiling: Why Women Can’t Seem to Break
the Invisible Barrier that Blocks Them from Top Jobs in the Wall Street Journal.“
Katalin Koncz described the ‘glass ceiling’ phenomenon as a “structural
deadlock”, which virtually means the end of advancement within an
See also Vida, K. — Kovacs, M.: A token helyzet és a meritokrácia illúziója: a kivétel erősíti a
szabalyt?, in Kovács, M. (ed.): Társadalmi nemek: elméleti megközelítések és kutatási ered¬
menyek, Budapest, ELTE Eötvös, 2017, 140-170.
See also Nagy—Primecz: Nok és férfiak a szervezetekben.
International comparative analysis shows that gender segregation of the labour market is
present in all countries of the world and remains unchanged (Anker [1998], Charles [1992]),
“despite the fact that there is an approximation in different approaches of women and men to
the labour market and their education”. (Koncz, K.: A munkaerőpiac nemek szerinti szegre¬
gációjának jelensége és mérése, Statisztikai Szemle, 88(10—11), 2010, 1083)
85 Cf. Lockwood, N. R. (2004): The Glass Ceiling: Domestic and International Perspectives, http://
citeseerx.ist.psu.edu/viewdoc/download?doi=10.1.1.470.6766&rep=repl&type=pdf (accessed
5 January 2018). Although the metaphor of the glass ceiling goes back to the 1980s, earlier
research, such as the work of Rosther Moss Kanter titled Men and Women of the Corporation
from the 1970s (New York, Basic Books, 1977), showed how different their positions are and
how different the tasks of women and men are in organisations. (Nagy, B.: Szervezet és nemek,
60.)
8° Hymowitz, C. — Schellhardt, T. D.: The Glass Ceiling. Why Women Can’t Seem to Break the
Invisible Barrier that Blocks them from the Top Jobs, The Wall Street Journal, D1, D4—D5,
1986.
+ 40 +