Measuring women's beliefs about glass ceilings: development of the Career Pathways Survey

Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to develop a new measure called the Career Pathways Survey (CPS) which allows quantitative comparisons of women's beliefs about glass ceilings.

Design/methodology/approach

A 34‐item version of the CPS was completed by 243 women from all levels of management, mostly in Australia. An expanded 38‐item CPS was administered to another sample of women (n=307).

Findings

Analyses of data from both studies yielded a four factor model of attitudes to glass ceilings: resilience, acceptance, resignation and denial. The factors demonstrated good internal consistency.

Practical implications

The CPS allows a comparison of positive attitudes towards seeking promotions via resilience and denial scores, and provides feedback on negative attitudes towards seeking promotions via resignation and acceptance scores.

Social implications

This new measure can be recommended for studies of women's and men's attitudes towards gender inequality in organizational leadership. Also, it could play a role in identifying sexist cultures in organizations.

Originality/value

Because of the scarcity of measures of glass ceiling beliefs, this study makes a major contribution to the literature on women's beliefs about barriers to career advancement.

Citation

Smith, P., Crittenden, N. and Caputi, P. (2012), "Measuring women's beliefs about glass ceilings: development of the Career Pathways Survey", Gender in Management, Vol. 27 No. 2, pp. 68-80. https://doi.org/10.1108/17542411211214130