Women and glass ceiling beliefs in civil service in Nigeria:

The issue of glass ceiling beliefs has received much attention from scholars the world over. Essentially according to Smith Crittenden and Caputi (2012) there is strong evidence of the under-representation of women in leadership positions in many countries such as Australia (Davidson 2009; Maginn 2010; Still 2006) China (Tan 2008) France (Barnet-Verzat and Wolff 2008) South Africa (Booysen and Nkomo 2010; Mathur-Helm 2006) United Kingdom (Davidson 2009; Thomson et al. 2008) and United States (Eagly and Carli 2007; Fassinger 2008 cited in Smith Crittenden and Caputi 2012). The glass ceiling metaphor is generally used to describe the obstacles and barriers negatively affecting women seeking promotions to the top levels of organizations (Burke and Vinnicombe 2005; International Labour Office 2004; McLeod 2008 cited in Smith Crittenden and Caputi 2012). However in this present study effort was made to investigate glass ceiling beliefs in civil service in Nigeria empirically. The study was a survey in which Ex-post facto design was adopted. A total of 610 female civil servants took part in the study.