Glass ceiling syndrome faced by women executives in educational organizations

The purpose of this study was to examine to reveal the barriers faced by women executives work for public schools in Efeler, Aydın. Semi-structural interview technique within the context of qualitative research methods was used to collect primary data. The sample was not determined since the number of unit in target population was not high (26 women executives) then 22 women executives were interviewed. The results indicated that participants started their career in the light of professional purposes, the education institutions would benefit from women executives' performance, social factors comparing individual and organizational/human resources based factors seemed more crucial in terms of inadequacy in women executive numbers, inter-women competition within organizations, difficulty in accessing informal network and unacceptable staff behaviors were observed the most by participants, then gender discrimination, inter-women competition/queen bee syndrome and other factors (e.g. nepotism, pressures from unions) were found as the most common glass ceiling barriers. Additionally participants made various recommendations, which were particularly for women, to overcome glass ceiling barriers. The results would be beneficial for practitioners and future research.