The Mexican Glass Ceiling and the Construction of Equal Opportunities: Narratives of Women Managers

Salvador Barragan
Albert Mills
Mary Runte

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DOI: 10.2190/WR.15.3-4.b

Abstract

Equal opportunity discourses in magazines targeted toward professionally employed women and men in Mexico were examined to explore the intersection of cultural dimensions of gender (machista and marianista) and the Anglo-American discourses of diversity management, including affirmative action. Women constructed the discourse of equal opportunity for other women's careers primarily by drawing on essentialist views on the nature of men and women, most specifically the sameness perspective—to penetrate the glass ceiling, one must "be like a man." The difference approach was considered in more subtle ways as women endorsed the diversity discourse for instrumental reasons. The postequity view was only superficially employed; women professionals did not challenge the less tangible barriers of the glass ceiling in Mexico, adopting instead the essentialist views on women and men as well as the masculine and feminine characteristics attributed to each biological sex.

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