June 2011

IZA DP No. 5828: Multiple Glass Ceilings

published in: Industrial Relations, 2012, 51 (4), 892–915

Both vertical (between job levels) and horizontal (within job levels) mobility can be sources of wage growth. We find that the glass ceiling operates at both margins. The unexplained part of the wage gap grows across job levels (glass ceiling at the vertical margin) and across the deciles of the intra-job-level wage distribution (glass ceiling at the horizontal margin). This implies that women face many glass ceilings, one for each job level above the second, and that the glass ceiling is a pervasive phenomenon. In the Netherlands it affects about 88% of jobs, and 81% of Dutch women in employment work in job levels where a glass ceiling is present.