Sticky Floor Theory

The term sticky floor is used to describe a discriminatory employment pattern that keeps a certain group of people at the bottom of the job scale.

Sticky floor theory. Most of the workers who experience the sticky floor are pink collar workers such as secretaries nurses or waitresses. The sticky floors models in section 2 predict that while promoted women may at first gain the same wage increase as promoted men they do not continue to benefit from wage increases to the same extent as men. Is a metaphor sometimes used to convey the difficulties that disadvantaged groups experience in moving from the bottom of the organizational hierarchy. And so when a speaker on gender in the workplace talked about women and leadership and explored the underlying reason for the disproportionate number of women in high leadership positions as a combination of both glass ceiling and a sticky floor it resonated.

In contrast the lazear and rosen assumptions imply that promoted women are likely to gain higher average wage increases than men. The terms glass ceilings and sticky floors both refer to the experience of women in the labour market. The sticky floor refers to women who occupy low paying low mobility positions such as clerical and administrative assistants mental health care and child care workers and service and. Whereas the glass ceiling evokes the idea of a barrier preventing access to management grades the sticky floor focuses attention on the first stage of progression.