Career-Limiting Bias Found at Low Job Levels

Women and minorities are being excluded from the corporate “pipelines” that lead to managerial and executive positions, according to the first major government study of the so-called “glass ceiling.”

“The time has come to tear down, to dismantle, to remove and to shatter the glass ceiling,” Labor Secretary Lynn Martin told a Thursday news conference called to publicize the Labor Department study. Glass ceiling was coined to suggest an invisible, artificial barrier that prevents minority members and women from rising in the workplace.

The barrier to the upper rungs of the corporate ladder exists at a much lower level than was previously believed, she said, with the careers of minority members reaching a plateau earlier than those of women.

Women and minority members most frequently are excluded from informal career-development activities such as “networking,” “mentoring” and participation in policy-making committees. They are also more likely to be placed in human resources and public relations jobs than in sales or production positions, which are often the “fast track” to management, the report said.

Martin, who commissioned the yearlong pilot study of nine Fortune 500 corporations, said the review is the government’s first effort to analyze corporate biases that exclude women and minority members from jobs in which potential managers traditionally are groomed for advancement.

“The glass ceiling . . . deprives our economy of new leaders, new sources of creativity--the would-be pioneers of the business world,” Martin said. “If our end game is to compete successfully in today’s global market, then we have to unleash the full potential of the American work force.”

The report drew sharp criticism from Patricia Ireland, executive vice president of the Washington-based National Organization for Women, who charged that the report merely confirmed the obvious.

“We don’t need any more studies; we need enforcement,” Ireland said. “What we really need is an Administration willing to enforce (existing) anti-discrimination law.”

Elaine Sorensen, a senior researcher at the Urban Institute, a minority-affairs think-tank, agreed that there is a need to enforce anti-bias laws. But, she noted, Martin and the Labor Department “are taking the lead” in advancing workplace issues that other parts of the Bush Administration are unwilling to address.

Martin, meanwhile, denied rumors that the report, “The Glass Ceiling Initiative,” was held up for several months for review by the White House, which is engaged in a dispute over new civil rights legislation that the Administration charges would establish minority hiring quotas.

The Labor Department pledged to keep secret the names of the nine corporations studied in the hope of gleaning a more honest response from personnel at all levels, Martin said. The corporations were selected on a random basis from the Labor Department’slist of federal contractors, which are required to file statements detailing the composition of their staffs.

Problems were found at all nine corporations, but Martin said that all have agreed to attack the problem on their own and that none will lose its federal contracts.

The companies, situated throughout the United States, range in size from fewer than 8,000 employees to more than 300,000. Martin said the companies are involved in activities that include defense contracting, high-tech ventures and services.

Each of the employers surveyed had a level beyond which women and minority members have not advanced, the report found. It said that the practices that effectively prevented their promotion--many of which are said to be unconscious or invisible facets of corporate culture--include:

* When seeking executives, many companies neglect to make executive search firms aware of either their equal opportunity obligations as federal contractors or their desire that referrals be made from a diversified pool of applicants.

* Managers often choose and groom their own successors, just as, in many instances, managers choose the “high-potential” individuals whom they will serve as mentors. Because the managers are white men, they tend to choose individuals like themselves.

* Affirmative action is usually the concern of a firm’s human resources department or of one personnel manager, who rarely hires at the executive level. Executives, meanwhile, are often ignorant of equal opportunity hiring and promotion regulations.

* Executives are often hired after a top manager learns of a qualified individual, perhaps interviews him over lunch and makes an offer outside the formal recruiting process. Few corporations keep records of high-level recruiting and hiring practices.

* Employee performance evaluations differ: Minority employees evaluated by white male managers tend to have the poorest evaluations, and women’s evaluations often include such appraisals as “happy,” “friendly” and “gets along well with others.” White men, meanwhile, are rated by performance.

* Most corporations track salary data but not the distribution of “perks.” Top employees are rewarded with stock, bonuses and other incentives. These fringe benefits usually go to white male executives and managers, in effect resulting in wage discrimination.

* Women and minority members largely are absent from “line positions,” such as sales and production. In many companies, such employees are shunted into “staff” positions, such as human resources and public relations.