Welsh Journals

5. SMASHING THE DARK GLASS CEILING: WOMEN AT THE TOP IN WALES Teresa Rees and Sarah Fielder INTRODUCTION In November 1991, Business in the Community launched Opportunity 2,000, a project backed by the Prime Minister, Mr John Major, where 61 leading companies pledged themselves to increase the quality and quantity of women's participation in the workforce, including providing better access to the upper echelons of their organizations. The initiative was designed to assist more women to 'smash the glass ceiling', which they can feel preventing their rise to the top, but cannot see. In January 1992, a consortium of employers in Wales led by the Welsh Development Agency with Business in the Community and the Equal Opportunities Commission launched Chwarae Teg (fair play), an initiative designed to focus attention on and encourage fair play for women in the workforce in Wales. At its launch, the Secretary of State for Wales, Mr David Hunt, challenged the consortium's steering committee and Business in the Community to find 20 key employers in the Principality willing to sign up to Opportunity 2,000 by the end of the year. In his own words: This challenge is really for the business world to stand up and be counted. Declare your commitment to the promotion of equal opportunities and spell out the steps that you intend to make this commitment a reality and I believe in due course all of Wales will reap the reward. (Hunt, 1991, p. 4) It would appear that the interests of social justice and economic de- velopment are coinciding, and that the well-established patterns of gender segregation at work, so marked in Wales in particular, are now receiving the attention of major employers. But why do so few women reach the top especially in Wales? And what real prospect is there for change, even in a favourable climate? Gender segregation at work has received considerable academic attention in recent years (see Crompton and Sanderson, 1990; Walby, 1988); it is held