glass ceiling

English

Etymology

A metaphor using ceiling to suggest a barrier to upward mobility, and glass to allude to the often unacknowledged or “invisible” nature of this limitation.

Coined by US author and diversity advocate Marilyn Loden in 1978.

Pronunciation

• Audio (General Australian):

  (file)

Noun

glass ceiling (plural glass ceilings)

1. (idiomatic) An unwritten, uncodified barrier to further promotion or progression, in employment and elsewhere, for a member of a specific demographic group.
   • 1991 December 15, Kathyrin E. Diaz, “Telling Fortune”, in Gay Community News, volume 19, number 22, page 7:

     There are fears of hitting a "glass ceiling" beyond which known or suspected gay men and lesbians cannot rise. According to Fortune: "In a 1987 survey by the Wall Street Journal, 66% of major-company CEO's said they would be reluctant to put a homosexual on management committees"

   • 2007 January 5, Polly Curtis, “Six thousand women missing from boardrooms, politics and courts”, in The Guardian‎^[1]:

     Women are “woefully” under-represented in parliament, the courts and the boardroom, with new research showing that the glass ceiling is still holding back 6,000 women from the top 33,000 jobs in Britain.

   • 2017 September 19, Jennifer Szalai, “The Education of Ellen Pao”, in New York Times‎^[2]:

     […] it was the genteel chauvinism of the enlightened elites at Kleiner Perkins that carried with it the sting of betrayal. They promised her a meritocracy and gave her a glass ceiling instead: “It just wasn’t fair.”

   • 2021 November 19, Chris Megerian, quoting Bakari Sellers, “Kamala Harris makes history, again, as first woman with presidential power — for 85 minutes”, in Los Angeles Times‎^[3]:

     “Has the glass ceiling shattered?” said Bakari Sellers, a political ally of Harris. “No, but it does have another crack.”

   • 2022 July 29, Lux Alptraum, “Women, the Game Is Rigged. It’s Time We Stop Playing by the Rules.”, in The New York Times‎^[4], →ISSN:

     And yet as we stand amid the metaphorical shards of all those shattered glass ceilings, it’s hard to ignore the fact that empowerment feminism hasn’t really delivered on its promises.

   • 2023 October 14, Raphael Minder, quoting Agnieszka Holland, “Lunch with the FT”, in FT Weekend, Life & Arts, page 3:

     “My father really believed at some point that [communism]^[sic] would be great for humanity, perhaps also because he was facing all the glass ceilings for being a Jewish boy,” she says.

Derived terms

• glass cliff

Related terms

• bamboo ceiling
• cotton ceiling

Translations

unwritten, uncodified barrier

• Catalan: sostre de vidre m
• Chinese:

  Mandarin: 玻璃天花板 (bōli tiānhuābǎn)

• Dutch: glazen plafond n
• Finnish: lasikatto (fi)
• French: plafond de verre (fr) m
• German: Gläserne Decke f
• Japanese: ガラスの天井 (garasu no tenjō)
• Occitan: plafon de veire m
• Polish: szklany sufit m
• Portuguese: telhado de vidro m
• Russian: стекля́нный потоло́к m (stekljánnyj potolók)
• Spanish: techo de cristal (es) m
• Swedish: glastak (sv) n

References

• “glass ceiling”, in OneLook Dictionary Search.
• Eric Partridge (2005) “glass ceiling”, in Tom Dalzell and Terry Victor, editors, The New Partridge Dictionary of Slang and Unconventional English, volume 1 (A–I), London, New York, N.Y.: Routledge, →ISBN, page 873.

Italian

Etymology

Unadapted borrowing from English glass ceiling.

Noun

glass ceiling m (invariable)

1. glass ceiling