Sticky Floor Metaphor

In the literature on gender discrimination the concept of sticky floors complements the concept of a glass ceiling.

Sticky floor metaphor.

Sticky floors can be described as the pattern that women are compared to men less likely to start to climb the job ladder. Perhaps content to reach a certain level and to call it a day. Expression used as a metaphor to point to a discriminatory employment pattern that keeps workers mainly women in the lower ranks of the job scale with low mobility and invisible barriers to career advancement. Trippingly on the tongue.

I ve always liked the poetry of metaphor with its imagery revealing nuances hiding shyly in the background. December 13 2017by gozzter. Whose undoing is not so much out there but in here. Thereby this phenomenon is related to gender differentials at the bottom of the wage distribution.

The sticky floor metaphor is one where women somehow hold themselves back either unwittingly or by design.