Women's advancement in the German hospitality industry despite of the glass ceiling

Inhaltsangabe:Introduction:
Today, women represent 40 % of the labor force worldwide and continually climb up the hierarchical ladder of organizations. However, they do not overcome 20 % with regard to higher management levels. Interestingly, a share of only two to three percent of women is represented in executive management positions within globally relevant corporations. This number points out that the lack of females in top levels is a global phenomenon.
According to Wirth, the situation of females in the labor market has enhanced in the last decades. However, reports of the German Federal Statistical Office show that in 2004, only 1.7 million female workers were holding senior positions in comparison to 3.3 million male workers in the service industry throughout Germany. Consequently, these figures lead to the assumption that obstacles in terms of the glass ceiling metaphor seem to exist. Knutson and Schmidgall characterized a glass ceiling as -an invisible, generally artificial barrier that prevents qualified individuals such as women from advancing within the organization and reaching their full potential.- Prior researches indicated that obstacles that result in the glass ceiling effect are linked to disparities in, for instance, gender stereotypes as well as equal employment opportunities. In addition, according to Oakley, organizational, behavioral, cultural and structural explanations mirror barriers that lead to the glass ceiling.
-The more senior and well-paid the post, the more likely it is to be filled by a man, despite women-s numerical predominance in the industry-. Keeping this meaningful quotation in mind, this research was conducted in order to provide women in the hospitality sector in Germany with ideas and promising steps to advance in their career by breaking the glass ceiling. Therefore, in combination with a literature review, in-depth and open-ended interviews with females working in leadership positions in the German hospitality industry were executed in order to identify personal experiences and interpretations of the issue.
[-] In correspondence to the preliminary discussed background of the topic, the research in this thesis is concerned with the question of how women can break the glass ceiling in order to advance to executive positions in the German hospitality industry. The background analysis revealed that women seem to be underrepresented in valued and powerful jobs. Thus, taking this into consideration, one [...]