The Illusory Glass Ceiling

After all these years, could it be possible that women have created their own proverbial glass ceiling?

A new study conducted by Scott Taylor, an assistant professor at the University of New Mexico Anderson School of Management, reveals that woman are three times more likely to underestimate how their boss' value their work as compared to their male counterparts.

According to the Associated Press, the study was comprised of 251 men and women managers from different industries who rated themselves and requested ratings from their supervisors, peers and subordinates. Each subject was also asked to predict the ratings made by others.

Leanne Atwater, a management professor at the University of Houston says, "It's pretty fascinating, actually. It's a different take on it."

While the assessment measures nine elements of emotional and social competence essential to leadership: communication ability, initiative, self-awareness, self-control, empathy, bond-building, teamwork, conflict management and trustworthiness, it appears that the most significant gender difference boils down to good old fashioned self-worth.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when it came to guessing what the boss thinks, men overrated themselves, while women sold themselves short by an average of 11 percent. And, age plays a factor. Older women are even further off the mark, while younger women tend to make more fairly accurate assessments of their performance.

Chelsea Walker, 52, an administrator for UNM's College of Pharmacy, participated in a similar exercise while taking Taylor's class and was less than thrilled that her results backed her professor's theory.

"I was very, very surprised by his responses," she said. "I guess that I just didn't think that he thought that highly of me, even though I thought pretty highly of myself." Now, Walker meets with her boss once a week to talk about her work. Learning to seek positive and critical feedback may be one tool to remedy the situation.

Taylor's findings might help explain why women continue to earn only 78 cents for every dollar that men get for doing the same job.

Fortunately, if we're the one's who put the ceiling in place, we can just as easily smash through it. Or, maybe we don't have to go breaking anything — simply ask for what you're worth, sister.

Photo courtesy of My aim is true, via Creative Commons, Flickr