Is the Glass Ceiling Cracking?: A Simple Test

Myeong-Su Yun, Tulane University
Ting Hu, Tulane University

The glass ceiling is generally thought of as the transparent but real barriers which impede qualified women and other minorities from advancing up the job ladder into high level management positions. It is widely believed that a glass ceiling exists and that it operates substantially to exclude minorities and women from top levels of management. If the glass ceiling exists, it is quite likely to affect the gender gap in the high-paying and high-skill labor markets. Using samples from ExecuComp database for 14 years from 1992 to 2005, we test whether the gender disparities in the corporate executive market in terms of compensation and ranking have been changed substantially, and find that some talks that there might be weakening of the glass ceiling and reducing gender disparities are more or less a myth which might be more promising in the late 1990s but have not materialized in the new century.