The Impact of Glass Ceiling on Career Development of Executive Level Female Employees in Financial Sector in Kandy District

In Sri Lanka even though women represent more than half of the population, their labour force participation rate is less than men. Men's participation in the labour force is twice as women's. In recent years women and gender issues have become a major area of concern. Even seminars, workshops and conferences are being held over the world to discuss women issues and women advancement in all spheres of life, still it exists the barriers for women career development.

This study was entirely design by centering the focal problem of impact of glass ceiling on career development. This study also attempts to identify the contribution factors which create the glass ceiling effect on women career development. The study was conducted to find out the impact of glass ceiling on women career development of executive level female employees in Financial Sector in Kandy district and hypotheses were developed to find out whether there is a significant impact of individual, family, organisational and cultural factors on women career development. The data were collected from 144 executive level female respondents out of 157 executive level female employees in Financial Sector at Kandy district with a structured questionnaire. For presenting and analysing the data both descriptive and inferential statistics were used through SPSS 19.0 version and the results were derived.

The major finding of this study revealed that the glass ceiling and women career development has small negative relationship and individual, family and cultural factors have a significant impact on women career development while organisational factors have an insignificant impact on women career development. Further, in this study Adjusted R2 of women career development is 0646. It is explained that 64.6% of women career development is explained by glass ceiling. The conclusion was finally made that there are significant impact of the glass ceiling on women career development of executive level female employees in the financial sector at Kandy district.