The Truth About The Glass Ceiling

Ever heard of the glass ceiling? Of course you have, like those other chimeras sexism, the gender pay gap and mansplaining, it’s something you feminist airheads never stop whining about. It’s the reason there are so few women at the top, at least that’s what you would have us believe. And of course to rectify this injustice we need special campaigns like the 50: 50 Parliament; special monitoring of the mythical gender pay gap for big companies. Only big ones at the moment. And of course, special laws to promote women beyond their abilities, the Peter Principle.

But what is the truth about this all-pervasive male conspiracy, is the patriarchy really holding you down, or could there be some other reason? In case you don’t recognise this woman, she is the photogenic, charismatic, and totally moronic Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

That’s right, at the top, you work all the time. Here is Jordan Peterson explaining this graphically. Note that he is talking about the A List of professional women, top flight commercial lawyers.

He goes on to point out that once women of that calibre are married, almost always to men earning as much as or more than themselves, they tend to lose interest in their careers and opt for a better quality of life. It’s well to remember that like most men, most women don’t have careers. A woman may have a vocation, even a calling, but we can’t all belong to the 1%, otherwise it wouldn’t be the 1%, would it?

There are some women who can do it, and can have it all, career, family life, fame and even fortune. People of a certain political persuasion may laugh at her, but Sarah Palin was not only a city councillor, mayor, and Governor of Alaska, she is also a mother of five. That takes some doing. For most women though, this sort of personal success comes with a price, and sometimes that price can be very heavy indeed.

Prime Minister Theresa May is childless. Oprah Winfrey may be one of the wealthiest and most influential women in America, but check out her biography and ask yourself if you’d change places with her.

We even hear about this glass ceiling rubbish in the military. Women don’t belong on the battlefield, and most men don’t want to be there. Here is a senior woman soldier telling a talking head about the price she herself has paid.

Something of which you may not have heard is the 4% rule. This states that at the top, the very top, around 4% of the most physically superior women can compete with the men. Here is an illustration of this. In 2015, 19 women and 381 men began the US Army’s Ranger Class at Fort Benning, the first time women had been allowed. At the end of the 62 day course, 92 of the men and 2 of the women earned the Ranger tab.

The solution to this imaginary problem is always to lower the standards, which is what quotas entails. But ask yourself this, do you really want to lower the standards for soldiers? Would you say the same thing about doctors?

Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez was queen for a day, and she loved it, but the novelty soon wore off. What she was forgetting, perhaps something she never realised, is that politicians are not meant to wield power over us, but for us. Here is a woman who does understand that, a woman who has been at the very top of the pyramid for longer than most of us have been alive, for a staggering sixty-seven years in fact. During that time she has never put a foot wrong. To be queen for a day is one thing, to be invited to a banquet as the guest of honour, to have people queue up to shake your hand, to be invited on an all-expenses paid foreign trip, that is something. But how would you like to make over two hundred and fifty official visits to over a hundred countries, always smiling for the camera, shaking hands with countless numbers of people you don’t know or perhaps don’t even like? And to do this year in, year out, decade in, decade out.
Elizabeth II is inarguably one of the most remarkable women who has ever lived. She has wealth and prestige as well as power, yet in many ways she has less freedom than you. Would you change places with her, even if you could live as long? I doubt it.

The glass ceiling isn’t simply a fallacy, it’s an illusion. That doesn’t mean you shouldn’t aspire to bigger and greater things, including wealth, but don’t kid yourself you’re somehow being held down. Only the very few can make it to the top, and when they get there and look down, often they ask themselves, is that all there is?