The glass ceiling and the state.

Summary In the wake of the parity laws of the 2000s, the scarcity of women at the top of professional organizations has become a public issue, the subject of increasingly restrictive laws and measures (quotas). What is the situation in the senior civil service? This book, the result of an in-depth investigation in four ministerial departments, offers original avenues of interpretation. Beyond the recurrent discourses on "self-censorship" and women's "choices", the life stories of senior executives and managers reveal the daily manufacture of male advantage within organizations. Extensive and rigid working hours, the low legitimacy of the right to maternity leave, the opacity of promotion criteria or the sexism of the professional environment are all sources of inequality. However, the glass ceiling is neither homogeneous nor immutable. Ministries and departments are diversely feminized and accommodating. The professional destinies of women and men vary according to their educational qualifications, their social origin, their marital and family history. Policies of professional equality have limited effects, but they are also the support of the denunciation of inequalities and the valorization of new leadership identities, for women as well as for men (Editor's summary).