The role of glass ceiling in women's promotion to managerial positions from the perspective of faculty members at Iran University of Medical Sciences

BACKGROUND: In recent years, many changes have been observed in women's roles in organizations. In Iran, women face challenges to be promoted to high-level organizational positions. The present study aimed to examine the role of glass ceiling in promoting women to managerial positions from the perspective of the faculty members at Iran University of Medical Sciences. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This research was an applied study in terms of objectives and a descriptive-survey study in terms of data collection, variable monitoring and control, and generalizability. The statistical population of the study encompassed all clinical and basic sciences faculty members at Iran University of Medical Sciences in 2019–2020. The simple random sampling method was adopted, and the study instrument was the standard questionnaire of women's beliefs about glass ceiling developed by Smith (2012). To analyze the data, descriptive and inferential (namely paired-sample t-test and one-sample t-test) statistics were run in the SPSS software. RESULTS: The results revealed that glass ceiling dimensions could predict 48% of the variance of women's promotion to managerial positions. Furthermore, a significant difference was noticed between men and women's perspectives toward glass ceiling (P < 0.001); however, there was no significant difference between the two groups of clinical and basic sciences (P > 0.001). CONCLUSIONS: Failure to provide appropriate opportunities for qualified women to be promoted to managerial positions would result in nonexploitation of about half of the available capacities and talents. Women have unique abilities and soft skills in the human resource management. At the macro-level, policy-makers and planners to review the plans and delegation of organizational-managerial positions and also to further consider the role of women in managerial positions by observing gender justice and meeting criteria such as capability and expertise.