A theoretical review on gender disparities and glass effects

• Autor(a) principal: Simão, Pedro Miguel Pinto
• Data de Publicação: 2015
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10773/38760
• topic: Gender; Inequality; Barriers; Glass effects; Discrimination.

The impact that gender issues have in academics, territories, businesses, governments and societies is notoriously growing. This tendency can easily be understood in most active sectors. The tourism sector is no exception, as women are often underpaid, undervalued and work as part-time employees. Men, on the other hand, tend to occupy higher positions and have greater possibilities for career progression and to achieve managing positions. There are many aspects that justify these differences and cement the gender inequality scenario. By disallowing women to fully develop their potential, businesses and territories are limiting their resources and are unable to innovate and respond to the market’s demands in an efficient way. Women often face a dilemma, on which they can see a specific role but they can’t reach it due to a combination of barriers. In other words, they face glass effects that have not been totally broken in the present. Therefore, this paper aims at presenting the most common barriers for gender equality with special focus to glass effects, namely the glass ceiling, glass cliff, glass escalator and glass wall. The approach overtaken to analyze these subjects was a solid literature review, focusing on the main discussions amongst each barrier. The two main conclusions presented in this study remit to the large quantity of barriers that women face in the labour market and also to the lack of policies that protect females from discrimination.