What is the glass ceiling that affects women and why this and other gender gaps in the workplace must be broken

March 10, 2025

Despite the many progress made in terms of women’s rights, the glass ceiling continues to affect their growth in the workplace and deprive society of their contributions. We tell you what it is and how far the gender labor gap has been closed.

Glass ceiling, gender gap, Colombian labor market, economic difference, Más Colombia

It is likely that at least once in your life, you have felt frustration at the difficulty of a partner, friend or relative to move up in the world of work, despite having a high level of education, vast experience and full capacity to exercise leadership positions. It is also likely that you, dear reader, have experienced this situation on one or more occasions. Well, this phenomenon is known as the glass ceiling.

The glass ceiling consists of a series of silent and unwritten barriers that make it difficult or impossible for women to access leadership and management positions in organizations, regardless of the fact that they have all the qualifications and capabilities to hold them.

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In addition to frustrating the careers of thousands of women around the world, this practice deprives society of many of the contributions that could be made by half of its members if they were given every guarantee.

In fact, the World Bank estimates that the advancement of women in the world of work could increase global Gross Domestic Product (GDP) by 20%, essentially doubling the global growth rate over the next decade.

In times of low economic growth and strong winds of crisis, breaking the glass ceiling and ending other gender inequalities in the workplace is a real route to prosperity.

But how prevalent is the glass ceiling and other forms of gender inequality in the workplace?

In the midst of great advances, gender parity is still 134 years away.

With the Industrial Revolution, and especially since the First and Second World Wars, women have been increasing their participation in the world of work. From being relegated to work in the home, they moved into low-level positions or traditionally feminized areas such as nursing and early childhood education.

As they gained access to university education and as mobilization for their rights and awareness of their capabilities grew, they began to conquer other areas of the world of work and higher-level positions.

From pioneers such as Betsabé Espinal, Josefina Valencia, Esmeralda Arboleda, Rosa Parks, Emmeline Pankhurst, Marie Curie and Ada Lovelace, highly criticized at the time, the world has seen more and more women reach the highest spheres, to the point that today their participation in fields such as science, politics, sports, the arts and activism comes as little surprise in the West.

In terms of rights, women have achieved important advances, although these are often not fulfilled in practice: today they can go out on their own, drive and express their opinions, things that, although it sounds ridiculous, they could not do in the past.

They can also manage their inheritance, vote, file lawsuits, choose their partners, decide if they want to work and in what, demand the right to a life free of violence and a long etcetera that, again, although it sounds incredible, was not always the norm.

Statistics reflect women’s progress in terms of rights. The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2024 found that “women’s participation in the labor force in the 101 countries analyzed by the report over the past 18 years has surpassed 2023 levels: from 63.5% to 65.7%.”

The report also found that “the overall gap in Economic Participation and Opportunity has narrowed by 17 years since last year’s edition, although it remains the second largest gap to close and there are large variations across countries.”

Still, the study concluded that, at the current rate, it would take 5 generations or 134 years to reach gender parity worldwide. Moreover, although employment rates have increased in recent years, women’s progress has slowed overall.

Regarding the glass ceiling, information from LinkedIn cited in the World Economic Forum study reveals that while women hold 50% of entry-level positions, they only participate with 25% of managerial positions.

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The labor gap between men and women is wider than previously thought

In March 2024, the World Bank Group released the Women, Business and the Law study, which revealed a fact that is as surprising as it is troubling:

“Around the world, the gender gap in the workplace is much wider than previously thought. When legal differences related to violence and childcare are taken into account, women enjoy less than two-thirds of the rights that men do. No country provides equal opportunities for women, not even the richest economies”.

This conclusion was reached after including two indicators that were not previously taken into account: safety from violence and access to child care services. In doing so, it found that women have, on average, only 64% of the legal protections available to men. This is significantly lower than the previous estimate of 77%.

In addition, the study found that, of the 190 economies analyzed, legal rights far outweigh practice. Thus, although women are guaranteed two-thirds of men’s rights in law, countries have put in place, on average, less than 40% of the systems necessary for these laws to be fully implemented.

This is illustrated by the fact that, of the 98 economies that have enacted laws requiring women to receive equal pay for work of equal value, only 35 of them have adopted transparency measures or enforcement mechanisms to close the pay gap in practice.

Even more troubling is that reforms aimed at gender parity in the world of work have slowed markedly in recent years. Women earn only 77 cents for every dollar men are paid in the same job, and the figures related to the care economy are not flattering either.

The World Bank study found that women spend, on average, 2.4 hours a day more than men on unpaid care work, especially childcare and household maintenance.

Despite undeniable progress in women’s economic participation, the gender gap remains deep and structural. The persistence of the glass ceiling is proof of this: although women’s presence in the labor market has improved, access to leadership positions is still restricted.

This phenomenon, coupled with legal limitations and the lack of measures to reduce the gender gap, shows that the road to equity will be longer than previously thought. Without strong policies and major cultural changes, gender parity in the workplace will remain a distant prospect.