Husband convinced there is no glass ceiling anymore

[Stickywhitelovepiss]

This is on the basis that a number of senior positions including PM are held by women right now, and 10% (!) of FTSE 500 CEOs are women (apparently).

Please help me get it through his head that this doesn’t mean the glass ceiling has suddenly and miraculously shattered across the board.

The glass ceiling is really in the home now, I think, if a family has kids. I do think there are still barriers due to discrimination, though.

The choice for some mothers to take a step back when raising children is often because they know full well that they are the only one who will fully engage and that it's not an equal choice between the 2 parents in terms of taking the foot off the career gas.

Frankly Stickywhitelovepiss, what I would do here (obviously I don't know your circumstances, so no idea if possible for you), is tell hubby that he is probably right, the problem is women limiting themselves by doing all this extra work for home and family that men can do just as well, and that is why they are still underrepresented.
And you have decided to change that right now and focus on your career, while he can manage the kids, organize family life and bake the Christmas cookies.

Words will get you only so far imo.

What ayerobot said.
There's not a position a women can't reach now. A lot of it is down to choice and compromise about career vs family and how this is decided within the home.
What makes you think the glass ceiling isn't broken?

Theres are several studies that show peoples perceptions don't match reality; I couldn't find the one I was thinking of but I did find this;

''In a Harvard Business Review article about Harvard Business School graduates, which looked at career expectations between graduating husbands and wives, Robin Ely found that half of the men thought their career would take priority. Almost all the women thought their careers would take equal priority to their husband’s.
When asked about major caregiver roles, 75% of the men believed their wife would take on most of the responsibility; 50% of the women thought they would take on most of this type of work. (Ironically, in reality 86% of the women took on the major caregiver roles, exceeding men’s expectations!)''
www.weforum.org/agenda/2015/02/how-men-and-women-see-gender-equality-differently/

I have found (at my work) that men are very good at making excuses which they consider ‘reasons’ for the gender pay gap.

Subconsciously they will protect their position....

We don’t have kids so I don’t think this would register- if it’s not his own lived experience it’s no one else’s either!

It is possible for women to succeed, but it's a harder path than for men. Even if you take out factors like children and the second shift, women often have to achieve more and prove themselves more than men at equivalent levels. There's still a lot of unconscious bias holding women back. There's still a glass ceiling, even if it may have some cracks in it (and some days, I'm not sure we've even got that.)

This is a recent article about the veterinary profession. Misogyny is still alive and kicking.

www.bva.co.uk/news-campaigns-and-policy/newsroom/news-releases/-timeforchange--do-women-in-the-veterinary-profession-still-face-discrimination-/

Over 50,000 women lose their jobs each year because of having a child. This doesn’t happen to men.

www.theguardian.com/money/2015/jul/24/maternity-leave-discrimination-54000-women-lose-jobs-each-year-ehrc-report

And even if there is no pregnancy or child involved 40% of managers would avoid hiring a woman of child bearing age. This does not happen to men.

www.theguardian.com/money/2014/aug/12/managers-avoid-hiring-younger-women-maternity-leave

We recently had an equality survey in my department at work. Bear in mind that my department is 80-90% male and the current senior leadership team is entirely male (although some of the middle managers are female). One of the questions was: Are women under represented at senior level? The answers were a mix of yes and no. Not a great start. But the thing I was absolutely gobsmacked by was that there was also the opposite question: Are men under represented at senior level? - and one person answered yes! WTF? I guess it was just someone being a dick and deliberately trying to give annoying / controversial answers. But even so. Really? 100% isn't enough???

It's been commented on that the current PM is an example of the 'glass cliff' - give a woman an impossible job when the shit has hit the fan. She was the only credible candidate in the leadership election, none of the career-minded men would touch the job. . This is apparently a not uncommon phenomenon.

So, does your DH have an explanation why 90% of FTSE 500 CEOs are still men? Do put it that way round ... It makes it clearer it's the overwhelming majority.

We don’t have kids so I don’t think this would register- if it’s not his own lived experience it’s no one else’s either!

Ah okay. One big stumbling block for women imo is networking. The boys will do it very effectively - I help you, you help me, going to have a beer after work... while women at higher levels find only few other women to network with. So they'd have to network with men - which can easily get construed as sexual advances either by the guy himself, or by people on the outside. Both problematic. (You could tell hubby to come home late, becuse you have to do some networking with John after work, over beer ;-) )
That plus men being more confident and people having more confidence in women (even if they show confidence). That's been demostrated by studies. (Just like the same CV will be selected by more recruiters if it has a male name on them).

Can anyone imagine a woman of the talents of one Boris Johnson would have considered herself suitable to be foreign minister? And had a woman ever gotten away with so much crap?

Same with Hillary Clinton. I clearly preferred Bernie Sanders, he was way more ready to challenge the establishment, demand bold policies... but would a woman with his attitudes ever have gone so far? The fact of the matter is that it took Hillary all this dealmaking, playing by the rules, embrace Wall Street... to get her where she was. And that was precisely what - in an election where the people rejected the establishment and the status quo - was her downfall.

(I doubt this rant will convince you hubby, but anyway, I needed to say it ).

I read this on MN:

Equality isn't when an exceptional woman succeeds. It's when mediocre women go as far as mediocre men.

Equality isn't when an exceptional woman succeeds. It's when mediocre women go as far as mediocre men.

This sums it up, really.

Men are often oblivious, a friend of my husband's insisted discrimination against women at work doesn't exist as he'd never seen it happen.

He works in a company that has almost no women in a group that has no woman!

And he couldn't see that if he has no women colleagues at work at all (a) how would he see a woman being discriminated against if There are no women there? and (b) does the lack of any women at all at work not suggests there may be a wee bit of a problem?

So, does your DH have an explanation why 90% of FTSE 500 CEOs are still men? Do put it that way round ... It makes it clearer it's the overwhelming majority
This is exactly what I came to say. In the FTSE100 there are more CEOs called Dave than there are women. Sounds equal .

When I was younger, I used to think like your DH thinks.

After years of experience and observation, I feel very differently. The odds are stacked against women in so many different ways. The more I'm aware of it, the more I see it manifested in many different ways.

The thing is, some of the barriers have been removed (overt and unashamed discrimination against women in the workplace) so many men are seeing more women in the workplace and think that things are more equal.

What they don't see is all the very competent and intelligent women who aren't there because the jobs aren't flexible and society still expects women to pick up the shit work of childcare and family life. They just assume that those women aren't good enough or don't want to be in those roles, or more likely they just don't consider them at all.

My organisation is fairly 50/50 in terms of men and women having senior positions, which on the face of it sounds great. When you actually look at the full picture though nearly all the women in senior positions are childless, whereas very few of the men are.

What is actually happening is that women can nearly be equal, as long as they don't do that irritating womanly thing of bearing children.

A few points:

Have a look at gender pay gap reporting.

Does he think the 10% figure you quoted is good?!?

In my world (law) more than 50% of entrants are female. Around 20% of partners of law firms are (and even fewer equity partners - the ones who make the real money). Does he not think there might be some issue there?

Just ask him how many men work part time. Then ask him how many women work part time. Then ask him if he became a father how he would expect his career to change.

Men's careers rarely change once children arrive. Many women learn the hard way that their career is pretty much stopped in its tracks once children arrive. This doesn't seem to be the case for men. In fact it appears to be the opposite.

A man with a wife and child is looked upon more favourably than a man with a working wife. The assumption being a wife at home with a child is more likely to enable the man to make his work a priority. The wife will keep 'house', dinners on table, underpants scrubbed, etc. so the man can focus on career.

Exactly that on the 10/90 ratio!

DH thinks women just “don’t want” to work at that level.

DH thinks women just “don’t want” to work at that level.

Oh ffs. Why would that be? Are women allergic to money or to power?
It is not like lower paid jobs are necessarily less stressful or guarantee you a weekend with the kids. With a CEO salary you can at least buy high quality child care.

I think there's no glass ceiling if you're prepared to behave as male executives have always done.

Was talking to friends the other day (different companies and professions) and we'd all noticed a mini-trend where people (men and women) who'd won promotion were childless and single, thus presumably better able to be "married to the job". I reckon it reflects fathers being more hands-on and the increasing undesirability and unaffordability of having one parent at home.

Yeah right. Who’d want to be in charge of loads of decision making and earn millions of pounds when you could work part time as a teaching assistant round your kids school hours or not work at all and be reliant on your partner instead? It’s a no brainer really isn’t it?

I take it your dh is a straight, white, middle class, university educated, able bodied, neurotypical, British male? Who still has a bit of a sense that he is somehow badly done to and he deserves to not only be over represented by the highest earning and most powerful people in the country but he has the right to be one of those too and it’s just not fair if people not like him get one of those roles?

I’m sure you think he’s the bees knees but personally, as one of those women who has been fucked over and will never get a sniff of the glass ceiling, never mind an opportunity to break through it, I’m sick of hearing about selfish, self centred wankers who think their luck is evidence of how much better they are than everyone else. Spend a day in my shoes op’s dh and then we’ll see who’s choosing their position.

If you have netflix make him watch an episode of 'explained' called The pay gap explained.