Glass Ceiling

The term “Glass Ceiling” refers to limited upward advancement for women and minorities which causes them to be consistently underrepresented at the highest levels of the corporate ladder. In my government agency, I feel there are no alarming barriers to the advancement of women. Women are paid the same as men for comparable work and there is equitable distribution and diversity among personnel in leadership positions. However, overall I feel barriers still exist for women in other agencies. Traditionally, it has been a man’s world in the workforce and women stayed home and raised children. Now, with the way the economy is, women are forced to get into the workforce and with the influx of this new competition, some men see this as a threat to the jobs they currently hold.

Women have returned to school, received an education, and now want to compete for management positions. Unfortunately, in some cases, the opportunities are limited because of their gender. As more and more women are entering the workforce, previous beliefs are slowly changing to allow for equitable consideration amongst all qualified personnel regardless of gender, race, etc. The ethical issues are a lack of fairness and justice in selection, assignment, and promotion decisions.

From a Utilitarian point of view, when women overcome obstacles, it opens doors for other women to continue to push for equitable consideration based on qualifications alone which results in the greatest amount of good, over bad, in the long term. However, I don’t feel that employers should be mandated to hire a certain amount of female employees to meet a quota. This would bring significant disutility to all groups of job applicants. From the Utilitarian standpoint, allowing for a quota system would hurt everybody except for the female population.

From the Deontological point of view, by creating quotas for women, we are infringing on the rights of every other employee and employer. Employees have the...