Navigating the “Symbolic Glass Ceiling”: Identity Gender Patchworking, Silent Resignation, and Persistent Inequalities in Leadership

Professional inequalities between women and men remain a crucial issue in contemporary debates, despite advances in parity. My doctoral research explored these inequalities, highlighting a ‘symbolic glass ceiling’ faced by female senior managers and executives in French companies. This persistence of unease, even in senior management positions, can be explained by three interconnected dimensions: the socio-cultural context, women's bodily experiences and self-placating. Together, these factors maintain a system of inequality, even for those who appear to have broken through the hierarchical ceiling.

In this presentation, I will employ the concepts of ‘identity gender patchworking’ and ‘political make-up’ to illustrate how these women navigate between compliance and resistance to managerial norms. Their adaptation to the ‘masculine neutrality’ that dominates professional structures can be seen as a form of silent resignation or symbolic withdrawal. This process of adaptation, while often invisible, raises fundamental questions about how women subtly resist and navigate power dynamics in their professional environments.

By maintaining positions of authority, these women manage to assert their presence, but often at a significant personal and psychological cost. Their ability to continue within these structures, despite persistent obstacles, reflects both the limitations of current approaches to gender equality and the complex, nuanced forms of resistance that are essential for understanding the lived experiences of women in leadership roles.