Modest Manifesto for Shattering the Glass Ceiling

Although women have made enormous gains in the business world--they hold seats on corporate boards and run major companies--they still comprise only 10% of senior managers in Fortune 500 companies. What will it take to shatter the glass ceiling? According to Debra Meyerson and Joyce Fletcher, it's not a revolution but a strategy of small wins--a series of incremental changes aimed at the subtle discriminatory forces that still reside in organizations. It used to be easy to spot gender discrimination in the corporate world, but today overt displays are rare. Instead, discrimination against women lingers in common work practices and cultural norms that appear unbiased. Consider how managers have tried to rout gender discrimination in the past. Some tried to assimilate women into the workplace by teaching them to act like men. Others accommodated women through special policies and benefits. Still others celebrated women's differences by giving them tasks for which they are "well suited." But each of those approaches proffers solutions for the symptoms, not the sources, of gender inequity. Gender bias, the authors say, will be undone only by a persistent campaign of incremental changes that discover and destroy the deeply embedded roots of discrimination. Because each organization is unique, its expressions of gender inequity are, too. Drawing on examples from companies that have used the small-wins approach, the authors advise readers on how they can make small wins at their own organizations. They explain why small wins will be driven by men and women together, because both will ultimately benefit from a world where gender is irrelevant to the way work is designed and distributed.

• Workplace discrimination
• Executives
• Hiring and recruitment
• Anti-discrimination policies