A modest manifesto for shattering the class ceiling

Although women have made enormous gains in the business world-they hold sea ts on corporate boards and run major companies-they still comprise only 10% of senior managers in Fortune 500 companies. What will it take to shatter the glass ceiling? According to Debra Meyerson and Joyce Fletcher, it's not a revolution but a strategy of small wins - a series of incremental change s aimed at the subtle discriminatory forces that still reside in organizati ons. It used to be easy to spot gender discrimination in the corporate worl d, but today overt displays are rare. Instead, discrimination against women lingers in common work practices and cultural norms that appear unbiased. Consider how managers have tried to rout gender discrimination in the past. Some tried to assimilate women into the workplace by teaching them to act like men. Others accommodated women through special policies and benefits. Still others celebrated women's differences by giving them tasks for which they are "well suited." But each of those approaches proffers solutions for the symptoms, not the sources, of gender inequity. Gender bias, the author s say, will be undone only by a persistent campaign of incremental changes that discover and destroy the deeply embedded roots of discrimination. Beca use each organization is unique, its expressions of gender inequity are, to o. Drawing on examples from companies that have used the small-wins approac h, the authors advise readers on how they can make small wins at their own organizations. They explain why small wins will be driver! by men and women together, because both will ultimately benefit from a world where gender i s irrelevant to the way work is designed and distributed.