The Sticky Floor Phenomenon: A Bibliometric Analysis

The sticky floor represents the impediments working women face, where they cannot advance and thus remain stuck in their female-considered, low-wage, and low-middle-level positions for extended periods. While some sticky floor studies examine the wage inequality between genders, others investigate women’s socially accepted roles. This study aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis and identify the thematic trends in sticky floor-related publications. It explains the sticky floor and examines the aspects these studies focus on while investigating this phenomenon. It also aims to understand the evolution of research regarding the issues working women face, specifically concerning the sticky floor. This study examined 207 Scopus and Web of Science-indexed publications via VOSviewer. The results revealed four clusters that define two main themes in which the sticky floor is researched. These results are crucial to understanding the sticky floor and its impact and identifying the gaps in the literature for future studies.