Glass ceiling
Glass ceiling refers to an invisible that prevents specific demographics usually minorities such as women from accessing certain opportunities or rising beyond certain hierarchies at the workplace. In spite of more minorities communities attaining a relatively larger amount of employment opportunities in the contemporary era, there is still a huge disparity with regards to senior management levels and gender pay gap across all fields including the healthcare industry. The healthcare industry is characterized by a high number of female employees giving the notion that women have surpassed the glass ceiling. According to Tlaiss (2013), women are underrepresented in leadership and management positions despite comprising 90% and 78% of the workforce in UK and USA respectively. Among the key barriers to professional development among minorities include gender stereotype, minimal emphasis on a diverse workforce in the human resource practice, and discrimination. One of the primary reasons for the phenomenon in the healthcare sector as identified by Anderson (2018) is succession planning where organizations prefer status quo and continuity as opposed to disruptive leadership that may resolve the injustice.
The concept of glass ceiling directly affects job opportunities and career progression in healthcare. Minorities including women are denied opportunities especially in leadership and management (Chisholm-Burns, Spivey, Hagemann, & Josephson, 2017). It is thus imperative for stakeholders to initiate affirmative action as a corrective measure and popularize workforce diversity. Diversity among employees reduces the glass ceiling. Part of the reasons given as justification for few women and other minorities in senior positions is lack of adequate qualified persons from such groups (Gathers, 2003). Diversity management will increase the number of people available for career advancement from the said marginalized groups thus combating the glass ceiling concept.
References
Anderson, C. L. (2018). The Feminist Perspective of Implicit Bias in Succession Planning in Healthcare. In Succession Planning (pp. 155-163). Palgrave Macmillan, Cham.
Chisholm-Burns, M. A., Spivey, C. A., Hagemann, T., & Josephson, M. A. (2017). Women in leadership and the bewildering glass ceiling. American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, 74(5), 312-324.
Gathers, D. (2003). Diversity management: An imperative for healthcare organizations. Hospital topics, 81(3), 14-20.
Tlaiss, H. A. (2013). Women in healthcare: barriers and enablers from a developing country perspective. International journal of health policy and management, 1(1), 23.