About Glass Ceiling Index GCI

In the framework of the FP7 GenderTime Project, we have studied the problem of the so called Glass Ceiling factor (in italian ‘tetto di cristallo’), to indicate the unseen, yet unbreakable barrier that keeps women from rising high level positions, regardless of their qualifications or achievements. It’s a way of measuring the relative chance for women, as compared with men, of reaching a top position.

As defined by She Figures, the Glass Ceiling Index GCI compares the proportion of women in grade A positions (equivalent to Full Professors in most countries) to the proportion of women in Academia (grade A, B, and C), indicating the opportunity, or the lack of it, for women to move up the hierarchical ladder in their professions. If GCI is equal to 1 this means that there is no Glass Ceiling factor. A score more than 1 (e.g. GCI women > 1) means that women are under-represented in grade A positions while a score less than 1 measures an over-representation at grade A.  And in a similar way goes for men.

GCI data of different Academic Institutions in GenderTime Project have been collected and compared with those reported in She Figures 2012.

In this paper, we intend to present some results showing that in all Academic Institutions, as expected, GCI for women is always greater than 1 while the one of men is lower than 1, and both are close to the values of GCI of the corresponding country.

The assessment of the GCI as a good ‘stand-alone’ indicator of vertical segregation of Women in Science has to be conducted in a critical way, taking into account the context.  It also provides a new perspective on segregation in academic disciplines, as the CGI is not always correlated with the proportion of women academics.