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...litical leadership in nonindustrial societies (Whyte, 1978), and some even claim that male dominance of public leadership is a cultural universal (e.g., Brown, 1991). Even in postindustrial societies, leadership at the highest levels has remained overwhelmingly a male prerogative in corporate, political, military, and other sectors of society. Although women have gained considerable access to supervisory and middle management positions, they remain scarce as elite leaders and top executives. Consider, for example, that in the United States, women comprise only 4% of the five highest-earning officers in Fortune 500 companies and 1% of the Chief Executive Officers (Catalyst, 2000, 2002). In addition, women are a mere 13% of Senators, 14% of Congressional Representatives, and 10% of state governors (Center for the American Woman and Politics, 2001). Other nations also have small proportions of women in most high positions (Adler & Izraeli, 1994). Why do women continue to be rare in elite leadership positions, even in nations in which women have high levels of labor force participation? This chapter offers an explanation that differs from traditional explanations that focused on the idea that a lack of qualified women created a "pipeline problem." This well-worn pipeline rationale assumes that women are less likely than men to have the requisite education, training, and leadership experience for high-level positions. Underlying women’s lesser qualifications might be their acceptance of a disproportionate share of domestic responsibilities, which may make it difficult to assume very demanding and time-consuming occupational roles. Also, authors influenced by evolutionary psychology have argued for sex differences in evolved dispositions whereby women are endowed with fewer of the traits and motivations that are necessary to attain high-level positions and achieve success in them (e.g., Browne, 1998). Regardless of the vestiges of the sex-typed division between domestic labor and wage labor and any relevant inborn psychological sex differences, many social indicators suggest a rapid shift in postindustrial societies toward greater gender equality in education and labor-force participation. For example, in the United States, women make up 47% of all workers (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2002) and 45% of those in executive, administrative, and managerial occupations (U. S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2001). And in the United Sates and many industrialized countries, women now attain university degrees at higher rates than men (United Nations Development Programme, 2001). The presence of large numbers of educated women who are not only employed but already occupying positions as managers and administrators raises serious doubts about claims that there are few appropriately qualified women who are available to accept higher-level leadership roles. Therefore, it is sensible to consider other causes as the main source of women’s near-exclusion from elite leadership roles. In this chapter, I consider prejudice as a principal cause of women’s rarity in major leadership positions. The idea that a barrier of prejudice and discrimination excludes women from higher-level leadership positions is not new. Public discussion has centered for years on the idea of a "glass ceiling" of discriminatory barriers that prevent women and minorities from ascending past a certain level in organizations. After the term “glass ceiling” was introduced in 1986 in the Wall Street Journal (The corporate woman, 1986), it spread rapidly among journalists and other writers and soon became a part of the culture. This met...