Abstract
A number of women have reached top managerial positions in the public sector by breaking through the proverbial glass ceiling. However, there is limited research on what happens to these women once they reach higher leadership positions. Do they continue to face challenges despite their achievement? It is vigorously argued that women managers in upper-level government services tend to be evaluated less favorably than men, to receive less support from their peers, to be excluded from important networks, and to receive greater scrutiny and criticism even when performing exactly the same leadership roles as men. Women in leadership positions face an uphill battle with these challenges. And the challenges may set them up for failure, thus pushing them over the edge—a phenomenon called the ‘glass cliff’. This chapter analyzes the factors accounting for the successful advancement of women, how they shattered the glass ceiling, to enter the top level of civil services in Bangladesh, and what those factors may indicate about why women have not made more progress in the top posts. In this study, the glass cliff phenomenon is explained as another kind of glass ceiling that women face as they ascend to the highest structural levels in an organization. Once they crack the ceiling and fill senior positions, they are unable to exert authority in the same way as do men. The findings of this research indicate that dissatisfaction with intrinsic (e.g., involving policy-making, lack of empowerment, and inequality in the workplace) and extrinsic factors (e.g., work/life balance, ideological barriers, and subjective discrimination) leads to the glass cliff in the context of Bangladeshi public administration.
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Notes
- 1.
‘Glass ceiling’ refers to the barriers women are confronted with in their attempt to rise to leadership positions. Glass walls are barriers that hold women in certain types of agencies that are traditionally viewed as ‘feminine’ in nature. Glass escalators refer to occupational segregation experienced by gender wherein men in female-dominated positions are promoted to leadership positions at a much faster rate than women. Sticky floors hold women down to low-level jobs and prevent them from seeking high management positions.
- 2.
The small size of the sample may raise concern about a lack of representation of the population. However, respondents often said that they were reporting what they had discussed with their subordinates and colleagues in their workplaces. We can therefore assume that the research findings represent views from a larger body of women in senior positions in Bangladesh’s public administration.
- 3.
Glass and Cook assembled a database of all the CEO transitions in the Fortune 500, male and female, over a 15-year period. Then they looked at the financial health of those firms, not just their stock price. If the female CEOs fail to improve the ‘weakly performing firms’ then they are often replaced by a man. They termed this the ‘savior effect’. In other words, the firm experimented with this nontraditional leader, perhaps trying to signal that it was headed in a bold new direction or was aggressively going to address a decline in performance. And if that did not happen, these leaders tended to be blamed and replaced, back to normal—bringing in the typically white male leader to navigate the firm out of crisis.
- 4.
- 5.
Cadre/Non-cadre: The cadre distinguishes the particular occupational group to which a civil servant may belong, either at the time of recruitment or subsequently, through promotion from a lower non-cadre post. A Class I cadre officer has wider promotion prospect within his/her own service, where as a non-cadre Class I officer’s promotion prospect is much more restricted. The 27 BCS cadres include BCS administration, education, trade, economic services, and so on. All cadre officers are Class I officers, but all Class I officers are not cadre officers. When counted as a single group, officers of all the cadres comprise less than half of the actual number of Class I officials.
- 6.
The third section of Bangladesh’s Constitution contains provisions for fundamental rights. Rights and opportunities for women are the following (The Constitution of the People’s Republic of Bangladesh, 1972, pp. 6, 7, 10): Article 27: Equality of all citizens before law and equal protection under law. Article 28(1): No discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth. Article 28(2): Equal opportunity for men and women in all spheres of state and public life. Article 28(3): No discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth in providing access to any place of public entertainment or resort, or admission to any educational institution. Article 28(4): Special measures by the state for the development of women, children, and citizens in any backward area. Article 29(1): Equal opportunity for all citizens in respect of employment of office in the service of the republic. Article 29(2): No discrimination on the grounds of religion, race, caste, sex, or place of birth in respect of any employment or office in the service of the republic.
- 7.
In the last 46 years, Bangladesh has had 218 types of quotas in public services. Because the quota system did not undergo necessary reform, it was often the case that despite having all necessary qualities, many competent candidates were not entering the public services. The country was therefore often deprived of the service of capable manpower. Well-qualified candidates experienced it as a complete waste of their time to prepare themselves for more than three or four years but then not get a job. The quota system was initiated to reduce discrimination between citizens and to facilitate the disadvantaged sections of the society, but this same system eventually ended up developing a new version of inequality. Since this faulty quota system for civil service recruitment could not continue for an indefinite period, it was abolished in September 2018. The discontinuation was abrupt (announced by the prime minister) in the wake of an anti-quota movement organized by frustrated students who claimed that the quota system was unjustified, since most posts were earmarked for freedom fighters (those who were directly involved in the war of independence) and later for their children or grandchildren.
- 8.
One of the major problems in obtaining data on women’s employment in the civil service is that the data are often 3–4 years out of date, and much of it incomplete. It is with these limitations in mind that the data below must be regarded.
- 9.
The Secretariat is collectively known as the ‘nerve center’ of the government. The Secretariat consists of ministries and divisions. Some ministries consist of only one division, while others contain more than one division. A secretary is the administrative head of a ministry or division. The Secretariat is dominated by administrative cadre officials, since practically three-fourths of the posts of deputy secretary, joint secretary, and additional secretary are occupied by administration cadre officers. After this distribution, it seems that only one-fourth of such posts are to be shared by officers belonging to the remaining 26 technical and professional cadres.
- 10.
Being an ‘officer on special duty’ (OSD) means an officer may be removed from a posting and kept on hold without any assignment. The OSD period may be as long as 5–8 years maximum for some officers. Breaking the status of OSD could be hard, as it may be seen mostly as a punishment, while short-term OSD may be meant for higher education abroad, which may require being absent from work for more than three months. At the same time, an OSD officer may enjoy all facilities as per entitlement.
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Lasna Kabir, S. (2020). ‘Through the Glass Ceiling, over the Glass Cliff?’ Women Leaders in Bangladeshi Public Administration. In: Jamil, I., Aminuzzaman, S., Lasna Kabir, S., Haque, M. (eds) Gender Mainstreaming in Politics, Administration and Development in South Asia. Palgrave Macmillan, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-030-36012-2_5
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