Career barriers for women executives and the Glass Ceiling Syndrome : the case study comparison between French and Turkish women executives.

International audienceThe situation where gender pay gaps are typically wider at the top of the wage distribution is known as the 'glass ceiling'. It is one of the most compelling metaphors recently used for analyzing inequality between men and women in the workplace, in order to describea barrier to further advancement once women have attained a certain level. The general-case glass ceiling hypothesis states that notonly is it more difficult for women than for men to be promoted up levels of authority hierarchies within workplaces but also that theobstacles women face relative to men become greater as they move up the hierarchy.This study presents an overview of glass-ceiling type barriers in organizations based on the perceptions of a sample of French andTurkish mid-level women managers. This study investigates how women in middle management perceive their career advancementopportunities and what they consider their organizations to be doing to support their advancement. This study begins with anintroduction of the concept of a glass ceiling that prevents women from advancing, and then continues with previous studies oncorporate practices and data analysis of samples from French and Turkish organizations. The objective of this work is to summarizethe Glass Ceiling Phenomenon and make a comparison of different arguments of researchers. In particular with this study, It has been pointed out that most past research has been relied on indirect tests which fail to distinguish studies of the glass ceiling effect whohave investigated a variety of labour market outcomes such as promotions (Powell and Butterfield 1994, Yap and Konrad(2009)),women carrier (Belgihiti Kartochian, Laufer(2004)), inequality (David J. Maume Jr.) and sex segregation (Mia Hultin 200