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1. Introduction
The world economy has witnessed a massive influx of women in the workforce over the past few decades (Saleem et al., 2017). This trend can be attributed to the interplay of several factors such as rise in the education levels of women, economic pressures to have dual incomes, the realization of the importance of gender diversity by corporates and the introduction of reforms to support working women like recruitment quotas and sanctions for verbal and sexual harassment (Rudman and Phelan, 2008; Abalkhail, 2017; Saleem et al., 2017). However, there has not been much improvement in the situation of women as far as organizational leadership and senior managerial positions are concerned (Schuh et al., 2014). Even today, women hold merely 29% of all senior roles globally (Grant Thorton, 2019). This situation is consistent across different regions, with women holding 31% of senior roles in North America, 28% in European Union and ASEAN countries, 26% in Southern Europe and only 25% in Latin American regions (Grant Thorton, 2019). Moreover, only 22% of the enterprises globally have female CEOs and just 27.1% of managers and leaders are females (International Labour Organisation (ILO), 2019). The extant literature has highlighted that women face several challenges while trying to climb up the corporate ladder (Enid Kiaye and Maniraj Singh, 2013). These challenges have been commonly referred to as “glass ceiling” in the management literature. The origin of the term “glass ceiling” can be traced back to 1984 when Gay Bryant first used it in an interview with US-based magazine Adweek (Carli and Eagly, 2016). However, the term gained prominence after it was used by Hymowitz and Schellhardt (1986) in an article in The Wall Street Journal and is defined as an invisible barrier that prevents qualified women from upward advancement in the corporate hierarchy.
Following this article, the issue of scarcity of women in top organizational ranks gained further momentum in the US. Consequently, Federal Glass Ceiling Commission was formed in 1991 to understand the factors that prevent women and minorities from climbing up the corporate hierarchy. The commission came out with its report in 1995 wherein “glass ceiling” was defined as “an unseen and unreachable barrier that keeps women and minorities from rising to the...