Women and Careers: The Issues of the “Glass Ceiling”

Introduction

Even today, many women, despite their qualifications and skills, are failing to pursue the career paths they deserve. These gender inequalities can be characterized by the phenomenon of “glass ceiling”, a metaphorical expression used for the first by two American journalists of the Wall Street Journal in 1986, pointing out the barriers and difficulties, sometimes barely perceptible, upward mobility of women in the higher organizational spheres. More precisely, “this ceiling is due to a set of invisible factors, as indicated by the metaphor of glass, which lets the gaze pass and not the people, opening the perceptual while blocking movement”.

Through this chapter, we will try to explain the different factors and the different problems encountered by women in the world of work to reach positions of responsibility.