​What if the Glass Ceiling Doesn’t Need to be Shattered?

Isn’t it our time to author healthy stories?

The Root of the Glass Ceiling

Isn’t it interesting that the glass ceiling is invisible and refers to a barrier to advancement that women face at the top levels of the workplace? We are the ones who created and accepted the structures and stories about glass ceilings that need shattering.

It originated by accident. When speaking on a panel at the Women’s Exposition in New York in 1978, Marilyn Loden didn’t plan to make history. She wasn’t even supposed to be there. But at the conference, the invisible glass ceiling, which was defined as a barrier to advancement that people didn’t recognize, was coined.

The phrase “glass ceiling” then appeared in an AdWeek article in 1984 and in 1986, the Wall Street Journal used it in a headline. The Merriam-Webster Collegiate Dictionary first included the term in 1993 as “an intangible barrier within a hierarchy that prevents women or minorities from obtaining upper-level positions.”

Achieving the unachievable to breakthrough and shatter the glass ceiling is a story that many women have been told is the ultimate goal of making it and being successful.