Glass Ceiling

America's largest corporations have been run almost exclusively by men for just about forever. Only two women head up Fortune 500 firms. None are in charge of any of the Dow Jones industrials, a listing of 30 of the nation's strongest corporations. There's a reason some women thought the glass ceiling was really made of cement. Now comes Carleton S. Fiorina, named Monday as chief executive officer of Hewlett-Packard Co., the world's second-largest computer maker. She instantly becomes the most powerful woman in a male-dominated world, the first let in the Dow Jones club.

A Montgomery County Community College staff member is making waves in the gender-equity field. Donna Brooks of Fort Washington, who is assistant director of admissions at the Blue Bell community college, recently met with the Glass Ceiling Commission in Washington to discuss her research on senior-level women in female-friendly organizations. The glass ceiling refers to barriers that prevent qualified individuals from advancing within an organization. The commission is a 21-member body appointed by President Clinton and congressional leaders and chaired by U.S. Secretary of Labor Robert Reich.

The Bush administration's cynical and wrong-headed resistance to the proposed civil rights law is looking more reprehensible than ever, in view of the Labor Department study of the impact of the so-called "glass ceiling" on women and minorities in corporate America. The research shows what female and minority professionals have known for years - that there are subtle but powerful barriers to their advancement in the business world. These barriers have been dubbed the "glass ceiling" because they are hard to see - and hard as hell to get over, around or through.

Two hecklers interrupted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's January campaign event in a high school auditorium in Salem, N.H., demanding, "Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!" Clinton paused as police escorted them outside. "Oh, the remnants of sexism - alive and well," she said, adding, to applause, that she was hoping to "break through the highest and hardest glass ceiling. " Six months later, Clinton's failure to crack that barrier is prompting an assessment beyond the usual dissection of a campaign's tactical and strategic mistakes: What role did her gender play, and what does it mean for the future?

How easy is it for women to break through the glass ceiling at Philadelphia-area companies? Not very. Women filled only 28 of the 948 top slots at local public companies last year, according to the Inquirer's annual executive compensation survey. The survey covered the four or five highest-paid executives at 221 companies, as reported in the companies' proxy statements. There was no woman among the very highest paid, those 97 lucky guys who pulled down $1 million or more in salary, bonuses, stock awards, stock-option exercises, and perks such as life insurance.

Jeannine La Rue had a dream. Really. It happened a couple of years ago, around the time of the Anita Hill- Clarence Thomas hearings. She went to bed one night worked up over the hearings and dreamed about having a historic summit, a summit just for women. Yesterday, the dream came true for the state casino commissioner from Winslow Township. That's when La Rue stood on top of the box she carries with her for just such occasions, and looked out over a group of 600 New Jersey women who had gathered at the Hyatt Hotel in Cherry Hill for the first time to talk about themselves, their hopes, their needs, their futures.

Nancy O'Mara Ezold - whose high-profile sexual discrimination case against a Philadelphia law firm was thrown out on appeal late last year - is back. She's appealing to the U.S. Supreme Court and has 55 women's, civil-rights and legal organizations supporting her. Ezold and some of those groups held a news conference here yesterday. "Each of them recognizes the very serious impact that the outcome of this case will have on their members," Ezold said. "My case is but the tip of the iceberg; it does not even begin to represent the number of women and other minorities in this country who are subject to discrimination every day. " Judith Lichtman, president of the Women's Legal Defense Fund, which signed on to the friend-of-the-court brief filed on Ezold's behalf, agreed.

Dr. Audrey Evans has never been the type to crash the party, but now she's gone right through the ceiling. This morning, Evans, founder of the Ronald McDonald House, will be among three highly successful women who will be given Spectrum Awards. Evans, who will receive the Elizabeth Dole Glass Ceiling Award, is the founder of the first Ronald McDonald House, at 39th and Chestnut streets. "I think I had to ask what the glass ceiling meant because it's not a term I learned.

WHY IS Michelle Malkin, the syndicated columnist and apologist for the Republican Party, allowed to write her poison for your paper? My father has always given sound advice to all his children (I am No. 7 out of 8). His favorite political explanation of why NOT to ally yourself to the Republican Party was simply, "The rich get richer!" If she is looking for a job, someone should tell Ms. Malkin that the glass ceiling for women and minorities in the conservative cult she desires to be included with could get her as far as an envelope licker for Santorum's "We hate gays campaign.

Was there a "glass ceiling" at Wolf, Block, Schorr & Solis-Cohen? Did Wolf, Block, one of the city's largest law firms, have a "glass ceiling" that prevented qualified female lawyers from breaking through traditional barriers that have handicapped women, including those seeking to climb the ladder to a lucrative partnership? Or was Nancy O'Mara Ezold, a good lawyer by most accounts, just imagining that her failure to make partner in 1989 was the result of some deep-seated disdain for women, at the time, by a majority of the firm's male partners?

THAT LOUD crashing sound you hear is Joan Carter breaking through the glass ceiling at one of the most venerable institutions in the city, the Union League of Philadelphia. That's right. The most famous and hardest to crack old boys' network in the City of Brotherly Love will induct its first female president today. Somebody, grab the sherry. This is huge, considering that the institution, founded in 1862, didn't allow female visitors inside the place for more than a century.

Decadere. Pretty/ugly. That's how the scene looks when two American and two Latin American dancers (Bethany Formica and Scott McPheeters, Carolina del Hierro and Marcelo Rueda) go into survival mode in the U.S. premiere of Marianela Boan's 2009 piece for her BoanDanz Action Company. In the aftermath of some sort of devastation, the four fight for food, for space, for something to do. They dance, they sing, they hook up. There are cameras on them at all times and the images are projected on the ceiling and backdrop.

Decadere. Pretty/ugly. That's how the scene looks when two American and two Latin American dancers (Bethany Formica and Scott McPheeters, Carolina del Hierro and Marcelo Rueda) go into survival mode in the U.S. premiere of Marianela Boan's 2009 piece for her BoanDanz Action Company. In the aftermath of some sort of devastation, the four fight for food, for space, for something to do. They dance, they sing, they hook up. There are cameras on them at all times and the images are projected on the ceiling and backdrop.

Two hecklers interrupted Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton's January campaign event in a high school auditorium in Salem, N.H., demanding, "Iron my shirt! Iron my shirt!" Clinton paused as police escorted them outside. "Oh, the remnants of sexism - alive and well," she said, adding, to applause, that she was hoping to "break through the highest and hardest glass ceiling. " Six months later, Clinton's failure to crack that barrier is prompting an assessment beyond the usual dissection of a campaign's tactical and strategic mistakes: What role did her gender play, and what does it mean for the future?

First there was Simone de Beauvoir's "second sex," then Betty Friedan's "feminine mystique," recently Rush Limbaugh's "feminazis," and now Lisa Belkin's "opt-out revolution. " This latest addition to feminism's repertoire of catchphrases refers to the record number of high-powered women who are voluntarily curtailing or opting out of the career track in favor of staying at home to raise a family. So while the feminist discourse of the '90s was concerned with the glass ceiling at work, the discourse of this decade is concerned with the glass ceiling at home.

There's nothing swinging about the 1960s London where Demi Moore, as an ambitious diamond company exec named Laura Quinn, finds herself in the engaging, if flawed, Flawless . A heist picture, a feminist revenge fantasy, and an excuse for Michael Caine to re-deploy his Cockney accent as a wily old janitor, Flawless finds the actress in sharp, smart business attire, using a mid-Atlantic accent (she's a U.S. ex-pat, educated at Oxford and...

Because this nation is a colorful mosaic as opposed to the mythical melting pot many pretend it to be, check-down lists of the accomplishments of those who look like you, speak like you, experience America the way you do, will always matter. First Irish American president? Check. And Roman Catholic? Check. First female speaker of the House? First black to coach a Super Bowl team? Check. Check. Tony Dungy of the Indianapolis Colts and Lovie Smith of the Chicago Bears will jointly become the first in that category when their teams meet in Super Bowl XLI in Miami Feb. 4. And guaranteed, when one of those two men victoriously climbs the Mount Olympus of professional football, many, many black Americans will not only make mental notes of the championship "first.

If somebody asked me to pinpoint the moment when I began learning about life from my daughters, I probably couldn't do it. But I can tell you with certainty that something quite unsettling has been going on in this chapter of my life. Increasingly, I find myself turning to my three adult daughters for insight, ideas and, yes, advice. Of course, I attempt casualness when it happens, as if I'm simply "grazing" around in their collective wisdom. I pose seemingly hypothetical questions, then listen to their responses more keenly than I like to admit.

WHY IS Michelle Malkin, the syndicated columnist and apologist for the Republican Party, allowed to write her poison for your paper? My father has always given sound advice to all his children (I am No. 7 out of 8). His favorite political explanation of why NOT to ally yourself to the Republican Party was simply, "The rich get richer!" If she is looking for a job, someone should tell Ms. Malkin that the glass ceiling for women and minorities in the conservative cult she desires to be included with could get her as far as an envelope licker for Santorum's "We hate gays campaign.

JUST WHEN we thought matters in the Mideast couldn't get any worse, a Palestinian woman carried out the latest terror bombing in Israel. But wait a minute: Isn't this the same religion that demands women be fully covered in public? Isn't this the faith that doesn't allow women to have any leadership role; isn't this the faith where women cannot drive, be educated or choose a career? But now we learn that Islam will allow its women to blow themselves up for the glory of Allah. (And people criticize Southern Baptists.