Glass Ceiling - Variations and Related Terms

Variations and Related Terms

• Brass Ceiling – In the traditionally male-dominated fields of law enforcement and military service, some people use the term brass ceiling to refer to the difficulty women have when they try to rise up in the ranks. "The brass" denotes the decision-makers at the top of an organization, especially in the military; it is an example of synecdoche.
• Stained-Glass Ceiling is a sociological phenomenon in religious communities similar to the concept of the "glass ceiling." The concept revolves around the apparent difficulty for women who seek to gain a role within church leadership.
• Bamboo ceiling – The exclusion of Asian-descendants from executive and managerial roles on the basis of subjective factors such as "lack of leadership potential" or "inferior communication ability" whereas the East Asian-descendants candidate has superior objective credentials such as education in high-prestige universities (in comparison to their white counterparts with only lower-prestige university credentials). For example, research shows that there are a decent number of partners at leading prestigious law firms in the United States who did not attend top notch law schools. However, an East Asian American partner of a leading law firm who did not attend a "Top 16 Law School" (according to the US News ranking) would be seldom found.
• Concrete Ceiling – The type of barrier minority woman encounter. Caucasian women may face the glass ceiling in the workforce, but be able to break through it from time to time; however, minority women's glass ceiling tends to be more solid and unyielding. This 'concrete ceiling' is due to minority women facing both issues of sexism and racism which intensifies their obstructions in advancing within the labor market.
• Expatriate Glass Ceiling – After breaking through the first level of the glass ceiling, many women are beginning to face an additional barrier. This is such a this second level of obstruction which prevents women in managerial positions from receiving foreign management assignments, projects, and experiences that is becoming increasingly more important for promotion into the upper-level managerial positions as documented by Insch, McIntyre, and Napier.
• Glass Cellar – refers to the under-representation of women in hazardous, low-wage jobs. What men's advocate Warren Farrell calls the "glass cellar of male disposability."
• Glass Closet – The exclusion of openly gay men and women from certain jobs, especially in the media.
• Glass elevator (or glass escalator) – Some believe there is a rapid promotion of men over women, especially into management, in female-dominated fields such as nursing. They say men in these fields are promoted with ease – they actually have to struggle not to advance due to facing invisible pressures and expectations to move up from where they currently are. This is based on traditional gender roles and stereotypes that men are expected to be in the chief roles, while women are to be in the subordinate positions. Therefore, in the fields where men are less common, they receive differential treatment that favors them to exert their authority and control in the workplace. Others believe that men in female-dominated professions are discriminated against and treated worse than women, the way women are treated in other professions.
• Glass cliff – A situation wherein someone has been promoted into a risky, difficult job where the chances of failure are higher.
• Celluloid ceiling, referring to the small number of women in top positions in Hollywood, as documented by Lauzen (2002) and others.
• Glass Labyrinth – referring to something related to a maze that one can find the way out of and get through; otherwise thought of as finding a path through power in an organization.
• Sticky Floor – refers to women who are trapped in low-wage, low mobility jobs in state and local government.
• Sticky Ladder – Women's struggle to reach the top of the corporate ladder. This term implies the idea that women are not incapable of reaching the top; they just get "stuck" on the middle rungs of the ladder.
• Glass Wall – Refers to the phenomenon of high rates of women advancing to executive positions but only in certain industries.
• Silicon Ceiling - The barriers faced by women entrepreneurs in the technology sector.
• Grass Ceiling - The barrier to further promotion in a business defined by a person's inability to play golf.

The effect has also inspired a musical, bearing the same name. "Glass Ceiling" (2006), written by Bret VandenBos and Alex Krall, examined and parodied the idiosyncrasies of both males and females in the corporate workplace.