Did Kamala Shatter the Glass Ceiling?

Saturday was a very significant day in America. We, officially, have a woman in the white house; a woman of color. Women have been waiting 244 years for this day to arrive.

Shortly following the announcement of President-Elect Joe Biden and Vice President-Elect Kamala Harris winning the 2020 presidential election, my social feeds filled with memes of Kamala dressed as Wonder Woman with commentary of the glass ceiling being broken.

We voted a woman in the white house! A woman who is one step away from the most powerful position in our politics. And not just a woman, a bi-racial woman of color! We have a lot to celebrate!

And.

The unfortunate reality is the glass ceiling was not really broken this weekend.

The glass ceiling is a metaphor first coined in 1978 by Marilyn Loden. According to Wikipedia, “The ceiling was defined as discriminatory promotion patterns where the written promotional policy is non-discriminatory, but in practice denies promotion to qualified females.”

Since that time, the glass ceiling has begun to encompass more than women being promoted into higher level positions. It has become enmeshed with the gender wage gap conversation, equal representation of ethnicities and races, discrimination practices and sexual harassment in the workplace.

The glass ceiling has become more than one woman getting one position of power. Kamala’s appointment to Vice President-Elect is not an ending. While I hope that it is the beginning of an ending, there is a lot of work left to be done.

76.8 million women woke up this morning to go to work facing no change to the reality of their positions, wages or working conditions.

The corporate hierarchy structure was never designed for women to succeed in the workplace. In fact, it was never even created with women in mind. The glass ceiling was, in fact, retrofitted into the hierarchical structure when women entered the workforce as an invisible barrier that was never meant to be broken.

• Only 38.6% of managerial roles are held by women.
• Women only make up 23% of C-suite roles, and women of color only make up 4% of that.
• Of all Fortune 500 CEO roles, 4.1% are held by women.
• Only 3% of Fortune 500 companies have at least one hispanic or Latinx member on the board.
• Men are twice as likely to even be hired in the first place.
• Women earn $0.69 to every $1 that a man earns. The World Economic Forum estimates this wage gap to close in 257 years.

Even when women do get elevated into higher positions within corporations, they face additional struggles, barriers and judgements. Women are afraid of disclosing pregnancies for fears of being fired, demoted or not receiving similar funding as their male counterparts. Of the 68% of women who face sexual harassment, 70% of them report it occurring in the workplace. Women historically ask for raises less than their male counterparts and fail to apply for jobs or promotions unless they are 100% qualified.

Now that Kamala has been voted into this position, she is going to have to work twice as hard as her male predecessors to be seen in equal light. Her uncle has already alluded to this in an interview with comments about how hard she will be working in the role with plans to take additional responsibilities than what’s expected of her. And still there will be questions about her impact as the Vice President.

As we saw with Hillary Clinton’s 2016 campaign, Kamala will also be facing scrutiny for her appearance, facial expressions and vocal tone. The perceptions and reviews of her job performance will be filtered through bias of how women — not to mention women of color — are “supposed” to look, act and speak. In one day, her appearance will be scrutinized beyond anything a man would face during their entire term.

The fight for equality, parity, representation and respect is hardly over.

Seeing those memes float across my screen yesterday brought me immediately back to Barack Obama’s presidential election. I was reminded of how many Americans went to bed on election night in 2008 with ease, thinking to themselves, “America isn’t a racist country. See? We just elected a black man to the highest office in the nation.”

Embarrassingly, I was one of those people. I don’t want to make that mistake again.

As we’ve all witnessed, that sentiment was wholly inaccurate. Our country went from having a black man as our president to an overtly racist administration who referred to anti-racism as “propaganda.” 2019 saw the highest rate of hate crimes in 16-years. Black men are imprisoned at six times the rate of white men. The rate of fatal police shootings among Black Americans is much higher than that for any other ethnicity.

Our minds default to forming very clean and clear-cut conclusions. We have a black president? We’re not a racist nation. We elect a woman vice president? The glass ceiling is broken.

Unfortunately, we’re not living in a superhero movie where the evil villain is defeated and the credits roll. Our world is more complicated and nuanced. I don’t want us to blindly believe one moment, one promotion, one position definitely means our world is a different place than it was a week ago.

Whereas having a black president was not a sweeping solution to the systemic inequities for Black Americans, neither will a bi-racial female vice president be a solution to the systemic inequities for women and women of color in the workplace.

While this moment should give us hope, let it also be a reality check for how much work remains before us as a nation to achieve parity and equal representation, as well as eliminate discrimination and sexual harassment in the work force.

It’s easy to post memes about progress from a singular event in our history and believe all our problems are solved. It’s harder to show up for the necessary work on a daily basis and fight for the systems to be dismantled. It’s harder to wake up everyday in the duality of celebrating our first female vice president while also acknowledging the tens of millions of women being held back in their careers. But in order for us to live in the world we desire, we need to hold space for both right now.

This is a time for celebration — a time for us to rise up around the world and commemorate this historic step forward.

It is also a time for us to be vigilant and to leave our complacency at the door because the glass ceiling is far from shattered.

In fact, I’m still not convinced the glass ceiling is breakable.

Over the next (at least) four years, we have a lot of work to do to continue strengthening the roles, pay and perception of women leaders in our nation.

The most effective long-term solution for this issue is a world without a strong hierarchical nature. Women need to evacuate the hierarchical buildings and use their leadership skills to establish more flat organizations — an organizational structure with few or no levels of middle management between staff and executives.

We have an opportunity in front of us to write new rules, create a new game and design a new world built for the benefits of all, not just for a select few. In this world, the rising tide will raise all ships and we won’t have to worry about bumping our heads on the glass ceiling because it won’t even exist.

It’s an opportunity that, as women and men alike, is going to require us to show up for ourselves and for one another consistently over the next four years and beyond. And not just with memes.