The glass ceiling is a firm fact in the corporate industry today. Women are unable to reach the top of the company they work for because of the invisible barriers society produces for them. If these companies would see how beneficial minor changes in their system could be for their overall productivity, the glass ceiling would be removed. As Elizabeth Perle McKenna says, all you have to do is “make the work fit into the [employees] lives so the company can continue to grow and be profitable and the employees can have working environments where they aren’t tearing themselves apart” (Jones 1997). Once this is accomplished, men and women will truly have equal opportunity to rise and fall on the corporate ladder.

There is also the problem of appearances. When men work with a woman, they expect her to look a certain way. Many of them still hold the age-old stereotype that women should not be working side by side with men, and they do not like to be reminded of the fact that women are equals to them, if not their superior. A woman cannot look too feminine or sexy, because this reminds the men they are working with a woman, and they would probably get distracted from their work. But a woman also cannot look overly unfeminine, such as in the Price Waterhouse case where a woman was denied a partnership because “she didn’t wear lipstick” (Jones 1997). The men probably feel intimidated by manly women, and might not like that the woman is so close to them in the business ladder of success that she even acts like one of them, maybe even more so. The case is about making women disappear into the background so that men do not realize they are working with females because “men sometimes don’t like being reminded that they’re dealing with women.” Women should not accent their sexuality and bring it to people’s attention (Jones 1997). And once a woman dresses how she likes and acts how she wants to, it is different from the usual conformity of the corporate culture, and the woman is most likely not going to be hired.

All of these additions would be beneficial to the companies who alter their policies. Once women start staying with the company after maternal leave due to more flexible hours, the company does not have to retrain new people to fill in the position. They have the women

Some topics in this essay:
Perle McKenna, Appelbaum Chambliss, Naff Thomas, Rene Redwood, Price Waterhouse, , jones 1997, appelbaum chambliss 1997, glass ceiling, chambliss 1997, appelbaum chambliss, women paid, redwood 1996, women top, reaching top, 1997 women, Elizabeth Perle, elizabeth perle mckenna, five women, chambliss 1997 women, chambliss 1997 reasons, women reaching top,