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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 hierarchy 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 phenomenon 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. Schellhardt 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 eredmenyek, 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 szegregációjának 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 +
