Glass Ceiling Effect and Women Career: Determining factors in Higher Education Institutions

The glass ceiling is a vertical segregation of women from top positions and hinders women's advancement in organizations at top positions. The study was focused to investigate the effect of the determining factors on the glass ceiling in the career advancement of women in HEIs. The study was quantitative and a multistage sampling technique was used to draw the population sample of the study. Total 154 faculty members from three public sector universities were selected. To achieve the research objectives, descriptive statistics, test of independence, and multiple regression analysis were applied to investigate the significant predictors of the glass ceiling effect. The results revealed that there was an association between the gender of the faculty member and the designation. Further, the factors "Perceived discrimination" (β = .134, p < .01) and "Male dominating culture' (β = .295, p < .001) were found the significantly determined the glass ceiling. Based on the findings of the study it was recommended that to control the glass ceiling effect for women, HEIs must include the blind review-based promotion and selection criteria at least for top management positions.