CSULB
women find glass ceiling hard to
break
By Jennifer Pollak
Online Forty-Niner
Contributing Writer
Women students at Cal State Long Beach may find it difficult to break the glass
ceiling after college. A recent study of California Women Business Leaders, released
late February, found the corporate environment of California in last place nationally
in regard to women holding leadership positions. Women represent only 8.2 percent
of the highest-paid California executives, and only six out of 200 companies
had a female chief executive, according to the study.
“The glass ceiling is never going to be broken I don’t think,” said
Marcela Chavez, director of the Women’s Resource Center at CSULB. “What’s
going to happen in my opinion is the glass ceiling is going to keep getting pulled
higher and higher.”
California came in well below the national average of women in top positions
in the corporate world, even those with college degrees.
“The concern I have is that even though women are getting more degrees
and getting more education, they’re not in the power structure,” Chavez
said.
Chavez, director of the Women’s Resource Center since 1991, said she
has
seen this power struggle with women students at CSULB.
“Every young woman here is concerned about these issues,” said Elyse
Blankley, chair of the Department of Women’s Studies at CSULB.
Leann Phillips, a freshman at CSULB, said so far her experience with men versus
women professors has been balanced.
“It’s been equal,” Phillips said.
According to CSULB demographics, women in tenured positions fell significantly
to second place to men in seven out of nine departments.
“I feel like there’s a lot to be accomplished as far as women having
a positive role as well as an administrative role in the work force,” Addye
Taylor, a CSULB student, said.
“There are challenges facing women in the workplace. The continuation of
glass ceilings, the proliferation of movement is lateral, as opposed to vertical,” Blankley
said.
Chavez also said there is not enough mentoring or development for women to get
into higher administration.
“I tell students once you go out into the real world it’s going to
be very different,” Chavez said.
In a recent meeting with CSULB President F. King Alexander, Chavez brought
women’s
issues to the surface.
“I met with President Alexander and I told him women’s issues are
still the very same. We haven’t made those strides,” Chavez said. “He
concurred; he wants to look at different ways of how to help women advance.”
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