Glass Ceilings and Catfights: Career Barriers for Professional Women in Academia

Abstract

Women continue to struggle to reach parity in the workplace, constantly hitting their heads on the glass ceiling. The inability to break through this barrier may lead women to develop covert actions to create an advantage over their competition. The existing literature on the relationships of women and men in the workplace provides some insight to the struggles that occur when one gender could be considered a professional minority. In addition, some researchers have studied the working relationships of women in the business environment, but there is a deficiency in the literature of the working relationships among women in academic organizations. The purpose of our study was to explore the challenges of female relationships in the community college workplace, as women continue to dominate these institutions as both employees and students. A psychodynamic perspective was used as the theoretical framework for the study. We sought to assess the perceptions of female professional staff in public community colleges of how women supported the career advancement of their female peers, as well as how their supervisors and departments supported the professional development of potential female leaders. The results of the mixed method study identified two areas of limitations for women within community college environments: interpersonal and institutional cultural. The results of the quantitative analysis identified that a majority of females felt their peers were supportive of the career advancement of their female colleagues. The qualitative results of the study painted a different picture, indicating that women may use covert actions to compete with and hold back their female colleagues.

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