Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Leveraging Impression Management for Women’s Career Success

Women predominantly occupy minority positions in decision-making positions, particularly in underdeveloped nations. This reflects the prevalence of the invisible glass ceiling beliefs (denial, resilience, resignation, acceptance) that impede women’s subjective career success. This study proposes and tests that, to attain subjective career success, women in corporate environments may employ impression management tactics to route through hindrances that glass ceiling beliefs offer. In contrast, women’s career aspirations shape this relationship as they act as a buffer. More specifically, we examine whether women’s glass ceiling beliefs influence their subjective career success. We also investigate whether impression management is a mediator and whether career aspirations are a moderator of this relationship, drawing from the Expectations States Theory (EST). Using snowball sampling, we obtained data from 291 women employed in tourism and hospitality sector firms. Our study concludes the significance of the four glass ceiling beliefs on women’s subjective career success, and the importance of impression management tactics to navigate the glass ceiling beliefs to attain subjective career success. Our study also highlights that high career aspirations only support women who accept the glass ceiling. We provide study limitations, theoretical and practical implications, study contributions, and future research suggestions at the end.