Glass Ceiling Index
The glass ceiling index and related distributional measures quantify the 'glass ceiling' — the tendency for gender disadvantage to intensify toward the top of a wage distribution or organisational hierarchy. Cotter and colleagues (2001) set out formal criteria distinguishing a true ceiling from a general gap, while labour economists operationalise it as a widening female–male gap at high quantiles of earnings, and popular indices (such as The Economist's) rank countries by women's representation in senior roles, pay, and leadership.
Read the full method
Sign in with a free account to read this section.
Method map
The neighbourhood of related methods — select a node to explore.
Sources
- Cotter, D. A., Hermsen, J. M., Ovadia, S., & Vanneman, R. (2001). The glass ceiling effect. Social Forces, 80(2), 655–681. DOI: 10.1353/sof.2001.0091 ↗
- Arulampalam, W., Booth, A. L., & Bryan, M. L. (2007). Is there a glass ceiling over Europe? Exploring the gender pay gap across the wage distribution. ILR Review, 60(2), 163–186. DOI: 10.1177/001979390706000201 ↗
- Albrecht, J., Björklund, A., & Vroman, S. (2003). Is there a glass ceiling in Sweden? Journal of Labor Economics, 21(1), 145–177. DOI: 10.1086/344126 ↗
How to cite this page
ScholarGate. (2026, June 22). Glass Ceiling Index and Distributional Glass-Ceiling Measurement. ScholarGate. https://scholargate.app/en/gender-studies/glass-ceiling-index
Which method?
Set this method beside its closest kin and read them side by side — the library lays the books on the table; the choice is yours.
- Gender Gap DecompositionGender Studies↔ compare
- Global Gender Gap IndexGender Studies↔ compare
- Occupational Gender Segregation IndexGender Studies↔ compare
- Quantile RegressionEconometrics↔ compare