Research Information System
11th GLOBAL BUSINESS RESEARCH CONGRESS, 03 July 2025, vol.21, pp.12, (Summary Text)
This study analyzes the historical and structural barriers that have limited women’s participation in organizational hierarchies and career advancement in Türkiye. It uses the metaphors of the sticky floor and the glass ceiling to explain these inequalities. The sticky floor refers to the overrepresentation of women in low-paid, insecure jobs with little opportunity for upward mobility (European Institute for Gender Equality [EIGE], 2025), while the glass ceiling describes the invisible barriers that prevent access to senior management roles (Taparia & Lenka, 2025). These metaphors offer useful tools for identifying gender-based obstacles that operate not only at the individual and organizational levels but also within broader ideological and institutional structures. To better understand how women’s labor is constrained, the study adopts Social Role Theory (Eagly & Karau, 2002) as its main theoretical framework. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the intersection of gender dynamics with structural inequalities in organizational settings and management practices within a historical continuity. In this study, to identify how representations differed across periods and to link them to our theoretical framework, we structured our analysis by synthesizing the thematic analysis method of Squires (2023). This study thematically analyzes 455 news articles published in Cumhuriyet Newspaper between 1929 and 2025, focusing on social dimensions. We used Social Role Theory as the main theoretical framework. Social Role Theory suggests that gender-based behavioral differences stem more from social expectations and norms than from biological factors. It also argues that institutional structures constantly reproduce these norms (Eagly & Karau, 2002). From this perspective, women have traditionally been linked to caregiving and nurturing roles, while men have been associated with authority, competition, and leadership in public life (Eagly & Wood, 2012). This cultural role division forms the ideological foundation of structural inequalities in organizations, including the sticky floor and the glass ceiling. Various studies support this argument (e.g., Chizema et al., 2015; Garcia, 2025; Hanek & Garcia, 2022; Hu & Coulter, 2024; Küskü et al., 2007) We derived the findings from 455 news articles collected from Cumhuriyet Newspaper, which we analyzed in relation to the structural barriers women face in working life. Our findings show that women’s presence in management has largely remained symbolic, sustained and reinforced by ongoing social dynamics. Caregiving duties, domestic responsibilities, and the gendered division of labor have continued to limit women’s chances of advancing into leadership roles, reinforcing both the sticky floor and the glass ceiling in institutional structures. Our analysis further reveals that women have consistently been positioned as a secondary labor force, which has contributed to the normalization of their marginalization in organizational settings. The analysis of the news articles shows that, despite formal shifts in discourse regarding women’s labour force participation, patriarchal norms have maintained their ideological continuity. The recurring dominance of themes such as “motherhood,” “domestic responsibilities,” “gendered professions,” and “lack of women in leadership” across time periods reveals the persistent resilience of gender regimes within organizational structures. The research highlights that, historically, women labours in Türkiye have been positioned either as the “showcase” of modernization projects or as the “reserve force” during economic crises. This perspective legitimizes women’s labor in temporary, conditional, and instrumental terms, preventing their sustained integration into organizational hierarchies. The sticky floor effect explains the concentration of women in low-wage, insecure, and stagnant roles, while the glass ceiling metaphor captures the invisible barriers that limit their advancement into upper management positions.