Content uploaded by Clara Kulich
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Clara Kulich on May 03, 2020
Content may be subject to copyright.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political
Behavior
Glass Ceiling and Glass Cliff
Contributors: Clara Kulich & Vincenzo Iacoviello
Edited by: Fathali M. Moghaddam
Book Title: The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior
Chapter Title: "Glass Ceiling and Glass Cliff"
Pub. Date: 2017
Access Date: June 6, 2017
Publishing Company: SAGE Publications, Inc.
City: Thousand Oaks,
Print ISBN: 9781483391168
Online ISBN: 9781483391144
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483391144.n153
Print pages: 331-333
©2017 SAGE Publications, Inc.. All Rights Reserved.
This PDF has been generated from SAGE Knowledge. Please note that the pagination of
the online version will vary from the pagination of the print book.
The glass ceiling and the glass cliff are metaphors that point to discriminatory obstacles to the
professional upward mobility of qualified women or other minorities, regardless of their actual
performances. This entry defines these concepts, gives research illustrations of the
phenomena and their causes, and points to real-life examples.
Overview
Despite half of the world population being female, only 6.6% of heads of state worldwide were
women in 2015. Although the percentage of women increases at lower levels of the hierarchy
(e.g., 22% for members of parliament [MPs] worldwide in 2014), gender parity in positions of
responsibility is an exception. Similarly, ethnic minorities’ representations rarely correspond to
the average population makeup. Numbers on ethnic minorities’ representation are hard to
aggregate because the definition of who may be categorized as ethnic minority is more
complex than for gender. However, statistics point to a large gap between ethnic
representation in the population and in governments. For example, in the 114th U.S.
Congress, 6% of politicians in the Senate were non-White compared with 40% in the whole
U.S. population. Likewise, in 2015 in the United Kingdom, 4.2% of politicians (House of
Commons, 5.5% of the House of Lords) were ethnic minorities compared with 12.9% in the
general population. Around 2010 in other European countries (e.g., France, Germany, the
Netherlands), ethnic minorities made up about 1% of MPs, again not matching the proportion
of 5% to 12% in the general population.
The glass ceiling and the glass cliff are two distinct concepts that capture the
underrepresentation of qualified individuals who belong to stigmatized minority groups in
positions of prestige or power. Overall, these notions both focus on the difficulties that
minorities face in politics and organizations, but they do so at different career stages: The
glass ceiling describes the barriers in accessing top positions, while the glass cliff notion
concerns the actual experiences of minority individuals who have advanced in the hierarchy.
Thus, the latter takes a more dynamic approach that looks into the process of and the
experiences surrounding such appointments. Both metaphors were applied to women first
and then extended to other social groups with a stigmatized or minority status (e.g., ethnicity,
age, sexual orientation) in the context of business and politics.
Glass Ceiling
This notion focuses on stereotyping and discriminatory practices that are difficult to see (thus
“glass”) but are effective in keeping members from certain social groups from scaling the
highest echelons of organizations (thus “ceiling”). The first known usage of the glass-ceiling
metaphor goes back to the late 1970s in the United States, but the term only became widely
known in 1986 when Carol Hymowitz and Timothy Schellhardt published their famous article
on “The Corporate Woman” in the Wall Street Journal. This metaphor was followed by many
other metaphorical concepts such as the concrete ceiling, which refers to the double jeopardy
faced by African American women who belong to two stigmatized groups, or the bamboo
ceiling, which describes the exclusion of Asians from managerial positions.
Reasons for the Glass Ceiling
Research showed that male and female political candidates did not differ in individual
characteristics (e.g., critical thinking) that could explain women’s worse election outcomes.
SAGE SAGE Reference
Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior
Page 2 of 6
However, structural factors such as a lack of access to social networks that are predominated
by men, a lack of mentors, or problems linked to work-family balance hamper women’s
careers. In addition, a number of social psychological processes such as stereotyping have
been investigated in order to understand gender discrimination in evaluations, promotions,
and hiring.
Stereotypes
Philip Goldberg demonstrated in 1968 that despite giving participants exactly the same article
to read, the quality of the article was evaluated to be lower when the author was said to be a
woman compared with a man. This finding suggests that inferences, which people draw from
the social group to which performers belong, bias performance evaluations. People have
expectations for individuals’ behavior and characteristics that derive from social knowledge
acquired through interactions and observations in society. Gender stereotypes are such
knowledge entities that associate certain behaviors, roles, and capacities with men and others
with women.
In the 1970s, Virginia Schein examined the stereotypes associated with successful managers
and with women and men in general. Asking participants about the typicality of a list of traits
for these three groups, she found that the traits associated with a manager and a male largely
overlapped (e.g., competitive, ambitious), whereas traits associated with women were
considered untypical for managers. This phenomenon, called think manager–think male
(TMTM), was replicated in different cultures, with different populations (e.g., students,
managers). However, since the 1990s only men and not women stick to the TMTM stereotype.
Women, meanwhile, perceive managerial traits as compatible with their gender group.
But where do these stereotypes come from? According to Alice Eagly’s socialrole theory, the
historical gender division in labor and social roles led to associations of agentic capacities
such as strength and power with men and the association of communal competences such as
care and warmth with women. As a consequence, men are expected to better fulfil managerial
and political roles, and women caregiving roles. In turn, seeing larger proportions of men in
agentic professions and larger proportions of women in communal professions reinforces
such gender stereotypes.
Discrimination
A number of experimental studies show that due to this perceived lack of fit between women
and managerial roles, female targets face discrimination. For example, female targets are
attributed less managerial ability and lower salaries, and they are less likely to be promoted to
a position compared with a male target. In addition to this evaluation bias, research initiated
by Laurie Rudman on the backlash effect showed that minorities are discriminated against
even when they are actually perceived to be competent performers. For example, women who
violate expected stereotypical behaviors or status norms (e.g., self-promotion, agency) are
perceived as socially deficient (e.g., not nice), which results in social and economic
punishments such as hiring or pay discrimination. Women fear such negative reactions and
thus hide their successes, which further undermines women’s progress in their careers.
When Minorities Become Leaders
Minority groups usually do not face just one barrier in their career that needs to be
SAGE SAGE Reference
Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior
Page 3 of 6
surmounted; their entire careers are full of twists and turns. Although minorities are
underrepresented, they are not completely excluded from positions of power. Research in the
21st century started to focus on the circumstances under which women and other minority
groups access higher echelons. For example, the analysis of the appointments of female
heads of states worldwide between 1960 and 2007 showed that women were likely to be
elected in precarious and unstable political contexts, in countries lacking institutionalization,
and for positions of limited powers.
Glass Cliff
This notion is an extension of the ceiling concept and focuses on the rare members of minority
groups who succeed in moving up the hierarchy. It shows that atypical leaders, such as
women or ethnic minorities, are more likely to access these positions in risky or precarious
contexts. The discriminatory nature of such appointments is invisible (thus “glass”), and there
is an increased chance to blame the newly appointed individual for the situation of failure,
resulting in serious damage for this individual’s career and a fall down the hierarchy (thus
“cliff”).
Evidence for the Glass Cliff
Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam initiated this research in 2003 by investigating the
circumstances in which women become directors. They accumulated archival data on the
stock performances of the largest U.K. companies over the 5 months preceding directors’
appointments. Findings demonstrated that women were more likely to become directors in
companies exposed to declining or fluctuating stock performance, whereas their male peers
did so following stable stock performance. Such a tendency suggests that bad company
performance was not due to a lack of managerial capacities of the female directors, but rather
that crisis contexts led to a preferential choice of women. Experimental research replicated
these archival results. In such studies, participants typically learned either about a crisis or an
improving context and had to choose a qualified person to deal with this situation. Results
consistently showed that various types of people (e.g., school and university students,
professionals, lawyers) selected female leaders in crisis contexts.
The Political Glass Cliff
The glass cliff was also observed in political contexts and for ethnic minority groups. The
investigation of U.K. general elections results between 2001 and 2010 revealed that the
female and ethnic minority candidates of the Conservative Party were more likely to run in
constituencies where the conservatives had not been successful in the past, compared with
male and White candidates. In consequence, the minority candidates received fewer votes.
Archival findings from French cantonal elections for the Socialist Party in 2007 and from the
Canadian federal election for most political parties (between 2004 and 2011) also highlighted
glass cliff patterns for ethnic minorities. Again, this pattern of observations was replicated in
experimental settings with participants preferring to nominate a woman to run in
constituencies with less winnable seats. Thus, one of the factors that may account for minority
individuals’ failure in politics is that they are more often exposed to situations where it is
impossible to win the election. In the United Kingdom, affirmative action procedures, which
match the winnability of seats for which minority and majority candidates run, eliminated such
differences in the Labour Party.
SAGE SAGE Reference
Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior
Page 4 of 6
Real-Life Examples
In the media, many careers of minority politicians were associated with the glass cliff
metaphor because they reached powerful positions in unstable or troubled times. In 1979,
Margaret Thatcher became the first female prime minister of the United Kingdom during a
severe economic recession. The election of Jóhanna Sigurðardóttir as first female prime
minister of Iceland in 2009 also took place in a period in which Iceland was experiencing one
of its worst financial crises. Similar cases can be found all over the world (e.g., Julia Gillard in
Australia, or Ellen Johnson Sirleaf in Liberia). In comparison, examples for ethnic minorities
are more difficult to find. Probably the most prominent is Barack Obama’s election in 2008 as
the first Black U.S. president, which happened during the United States’ worst recession and
financial crisis since the Great Depression. Although these cases capture instances of crises
at the moment of the appointment of women and ethnic minorities, the study of a single case
should not serve as proof for the glass cliff as not all components of failure (e.g., level of
competence, various other reasons) can be controlled. Only laboratory studies can provide
unambiguous information on the causalities.
Reasons for Glass Cliffs
Why are minorities the preferred leaders in such risky and precarious contexts? Several
(nonexclusive) causes were advanced in the literature, two of which received particularly
convincing empirical support.
Stereotypes
Following the TMTM association, Ryan and her collaborators proposed the think crisis–think
female (TCTF) association to account for the glass cliff phenomenon. As explained in the
glass ceiling section, gender stereotypes imply that men are expected to display the
traditional, agentic, task-oriented way of leading, while women are expected to display a
communal, relationship-oriented leadership style. The TCTF hypothesis states that feminine
leadership styles are perceived as more suitable during a crisis. As a consequence, women
should be perceived as better suited to deal with a crisis. According to experimental evidence,
this preference for communal leadership in crisis contexts occurred mainly when the leader’s
mission was to endure or take the blame for the crisis, or to deal with people, but not when
the mission was to directly improve the economic situation.
The stereotype content model by Susan Fiske and her collaborators states that any kind of
low-status group is associated with such feminine or communal traits (and high-status groups
with agentic traits). Thus, not only women but any low-status groups are stereotyped as
warm, friendly, and helpful and thus potentially fit the TCTF expectations.
Signaling Change
Experimental research found that, in troubled times, people wanted the situation to change
and thus chose an atypical candidate who could transmit such a message to clients and
investors or, in a political context, to electors. Since the typical leader is a man, and possibly a
member of a majority ethnic group, signaling a change consists in choosing women or ethnic
minorities. Conversely, in prosperous times, signaling a change is unnecessary or even
harmful; thus people tend to stick to typical leaders (i.e., men).
SAGE SAGE Reference
Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior
Page 5 of 6
Conclusion
In the 21st century, research on the barriers minorities face shifted from a mere investigation
of these barriers to an examination of the conditions in which hierarchies are scaled. Although
minority individuals made progress, the quality of such positions involves the risk to fail, to be
criticized, and to experience stress due to the high potential of conflict, blame, and difficult
underresourced working conditions. Glass cliff appointments may thus lead to opt-out
decisions in which minorities decide to leave such discriminatory and precarious contexts,
thereby reinforcing the glass ceiling. Fairness, however, requires that minorities should be
given the opportunity to make careers not only in precarious but also in safe contexts, and if
chosen for troublesome contexts, they should be equipped with the same social support as
majority individuals for handling such situations.
See alsoDiscrimination; Gender Bias; Stereotypes
Clara KulichVincenzo Iacoviello
http://dx.doi.org/10.4135/9781483391144.n153
10.4135/9781483391144.n153
Further Readings
Barreto, M., Ryan, M. K., & Schmitt, M. T. (2009). The glass ceiling in the 21st century:
Understanding barriers to gender equality. Washington, DC: American Psychological
Association.
Bruckmüller, S., Ryan, M. K., Rink, F. , & Haslam, S. A. (2014). Beyond the glass ceiling: The
glass cliff and its lessons for organizational policy. Social Issue and Policy Review, 8,
202–232. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/sipr.12006
Kulich, C., Ryan, M. K., & Haslam, S. A. (2014). The political glass cliff: Understanding how
seat selection contributes to the under-performance of ethnic minority candidates. Political
Research Quarterly, 67, 84–95. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/ 1065912913495740
Ryan, M. K., Haslam, S. A., & Kulich, C. (2010). Politics and the glass cliff: Evidence that
women are preferentially selected to contest hard-to-win seats. Psychology of Women
Quarterly, 34, 56–64. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/j.1471-6402.2009.01541.x
Ryan, M. K., Haslam, S. A., Morgenroth, T. , Rink, F., Stoker, J., & Peters, K. (2016). Getting
on top of the glass cliff: Reviewing a decade of evidence, explanations, and impact.
Leadership Quarterly, 27, 446–455. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2015.10.008
Schein, V. E. (2001). A global look at psychological barriers to women’s progress in
management. Journal of Social Issues, 57, 675–688. doi:http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/0022-
4537.00235
SAGE SAGE Reference
Contact SAGE Publications at http://www.sagepub.com.
The SAGE Encyclopedia of Political Behavior
Page 6 of 6
