An Overview of Glass Ceiling, Tiara, Imposter, and Queen Bee Barrier Syndromes on Women in the Upper Echelons

Abstract

The increasing women participation in the upper management level has been a comprehensive research study for women and career studies. Although only a few of them have had successfully broken the glass ceiling, they still have to struggle to keep up with the opposite gender. The purpose of the research study is to review past research studies on the glass ceiling syndrome, tiara syndrome, imposter syndrome, and queen bee barrier syndromes that commonly occur in women’s career progression and understand how it affects women’s career success. This paper reports the results of a literature review on four barrier syndromes in 45 combinations of research paper, books, magazine, thesis and discussion paper. Women need to have skills and ability in order to be leaders of upper management. The result of the study could provide a better understanding of the barriers that effects the women leaders in becoming successful. Thus, this research is conducted to gather and review the literature on the barrier syndromes and how it affects women’s success in their careers.