The "glass ceiling" metaphor describes an invisible barrier that prevents women from reaching the top levels of management. It assumes that the causes for this are within the organization and unrelated to inherent sex differences, says Kingsley Browne In this intriguing analysis of the differences between men and women in the workplace. Discussions of the "gender gap" in earnings also assume that the sexes are identical and that the gap is due to employer oppression of women. But sex discrimination alone cannot account for these disparities, Browne contends. He proposes an alternative view: much of the responsibility for differences in men's and women's earnings and status ties with evolved differences between the sexes.Recent theoretical and empirical work in biology, psychology, and anthropology suggests that human behavior is more biologically influenced than previously believed. In a sophisticated application of evolutionary theory to human behavior. Browne argues persuasively that basic biological sex differences in personality and temperament-the result of differential reproductive strategies followed by the two sexes during the course of human evolution-account for much of the gender ceiling in the modern labor mark.
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