What we talk about when we talk about the glass ceiling

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A reader sent us a link to this cartoon, and wrote,

I hate the implication that the faux-feminist Sarah Palin has overcome the glass ceiling, when if anything she’s working hard to reinforce it and add some bullet-proof layering as well.

Which is one way of looking at it.

This cartoon is also (inadvertently) an interesting illustration of something I think a lot of people get wrong about the proverbial “glass ceiling.” The glass ceiling is a metaphor for the idea that women as a group are prevented by sexism and other gender-related factors from rising to the upper echelons of politics, science, business, you name it. (I’d actually argue there’s one glass ceiling for white women, and another, harder-to-crack glass ceiling for women of color.) It is not something that can be busted by the achievements of one single woman.

In this way, it’s apt that the cartoon above shows Sarah Palin walking on a still-intact glass ceiling. She hasn’t shattered it — it’s still holding back women as a group, despite her personal success. And to be totally fair, I don’t think Hillary Clinton’s nomination for president (or even her election as president) would have, in and of itself, shattered the glass ceiling, either. That’s because when we talk about the invisible ceiling holding women back, we’re talking about broad, systemic problems that can’t be solved by one woman, no matter how fierce. In an essay for the Prospect after Clinton dropped out of the Democratic primary, I wrote:

Outliers like Pelosi and Clinton — and Fortune 500 CEOs like
Xerox’s Ann Mulcahy — do not in themselves amount to the shift
necessary to make lasting change. When a magazine hires a female
editor-in-chief, the number of women’s bylines does not automatically
increase. I would argue that the reason sweeping change doesn’t occur
is not because these remarkable women aren’t doing enough. It’s simply
that one woman at the top cannot change an entire culture. Looking at
these numbers across the board, it’s clear that the real ceiling is not
limiting individual women’s ambitions. It’s keeping women as a group
from breaking the 25 percent barrier.

If we want to cross that threshold, we need to look at the system.

Now, that’s not to say I don’t think women at the top are more empowered than women at the bottom to implement the kinds of changes that actually will crack the glass ceiling. Hillary Clinton would have been a far greater ceiling-smasher than Palin — not because Clinton was a presidential candidate while Palin is a VP candidate, but because Clinton has shown she actually cares about dismantling the ceiling that holds all women back. She has advocated for policies guaranteeing equal pay and paid family leave, and elevated many women to positions of considerable power within her campaign. Palin has done none of these things. In fact, as our astute reader pointed out, the McCain/Palin campaign seeks to keep the barriers to women’s advancement firmly in place.

So it actually makes sense that, in the cartoon above, Sarah Palin is trotting across a very-much-intact glass ceiling. The next time she says she’s “one of those 18 million cracks,” I would love to explain to her why she’s wrong. No individual woman — not even a vice-presidential nominee — can break the ceiling. Policies that help all women advance are what will really crack the glass.