Knowledge Mapping on the Glass Ceiling for Women: A Co-word Analysis and Conceptual Clustering of Structural, Cultural, and Managerial Barriers

Purpose: The glass ceiling is an invisible barrier that restricts women from advancing to senior roles in organizations. Despite the importance of this issue, the presence of women in management positions has continued to decline, and this unequal presence of men and women in management positions has been widely documented in empirical research findings. The glass ceiling for women refers to hidden and structural barriers that hinder their access to top managerial positions, reflecting the persistent gender inequalities embedded within institutional, cultural, and occupational systems. Given the richness of prior studies on this subject, applying scientometric methods—particularly co-word analysis—can provide a comprehensive and integrative overview of the knowledge structure in this field. Accordingly, this study aims to map the conceptual landscape of the glass ceiling phenomenon for women through co-word analysis. The research is applied in nature and follows a scientometric approach, employing co-word analysis for data processing. Data were collected from the ScienceDirect database between 2000 and the first half of 2025. Following screening, 290 articles were selected for analysis. In the co-lexical section, a graphical analysis of word co-occurrence and a knowledge tree of the women's glass ceiling are followed. The inclusion index and the proximity index (indices of the frequency of word co-occurrence) are used to measure the strength of the relationships between concepts. Accordingly, the concepts are clustered into groups and displayed in network maps.
Methodology: This technique, which has been implemented by many research groups, is a powerful tool for knowledge discovery in databases. The VOSviewer software was used to conduct the co-word analysis. The statistical population of the study includes all scientific productions of researchers around the world in the field of women's glass ceiling that are indexed in the Science Direct database. To retrieve the records of this study, a search was conducted in the Advanced Search section of the Science Direct database on May 10, 2025 (20.2.1404). The results of the scientific productions covered the period from the beginning of 2000 to the first half of 2025. Also, scientific, review, and conference articles published in English were selected from the available literature.
Findings: Among 985 identified keywords, a total of 18 high-frequency keywords, 3 clusters, and 100 links with a total link strength of 379 were extracted. The results revealed that the concept of the glass ceiling is structured around three major thematic clusters: structural–legal barriers, cultural–social factors, and occupational–managerial challenges. Keywords such as gender discrimination, patriarchy, cultural issues, gender wage gap, and work–life conflict were among the most frequent. In summary, the findings of this study, based on a synonym analysis and a scientometric approach, indicate that the "glass ceiling for women" is the result of the intersection of structural, cultural, and managerial forces. Therefore, approaches to confronting it must be multi-level, systematic, and based on transformational policymaking; otherwise, formal reforms without institutional and attitudinal changes will fuel the persistence of this structural discrimination. A synonym analysis of the scientific literature on the “women’s glass ceiling” shows that this phenomenon can be analyzed not only as an individual or psychological barrier, but also as a multi-layered and deeply rooted structure at three main levels: structural-legal barriers, cultural-social factors, and occupational-management challenges. In the first cluster, institutional barriers, legal issues, structural gender discrimination, and vertical occupational segregation emphasize those policies, processes, and decision-making systems that, at the official level, prevent women from advancing to higher management levels. These findings are in line with previous studies that have emphasized the role of unequal legal structures and opaque selection processes. The second cluster, with concepts such as patriarchy, gender bias, cultural problems, and gender inequality, addresses the cultural and subjective layers of the glass ceiling phenomenon. At this level, gender stereotypes, deeply rooted social norms, and dominant male perspectives in the workplace keep women in subordinate positions or prevent their competencies from being seen. In the third cluster, work-life conflict, career development, leadership, and concepts such as the gender pay gap and the glass cliff show that even if women overcome the initial barriers, more complex obstacles remain on their professional path. The glass cliff phenomenon, in particular, shows that in many cases, women only reach leadership positions when those positions are in critical and risky conditions. This not only threatens their success but also enables the reproduction of discrimination at a more hidden level.
Conclusion: The findings indicate that the glass ceiling faced by women is reproduced across three levels: structural-legal, socio-cultural, and managerial-organizational. The co-word analysis reveals a coherent network of gender inequality concepts at both international and national levels. Accordingly, policy interventions should be multilayered, coordinated, and structurally and culturally informed.