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Introduction
For decades, studies have described a "glass ceiling," an invisible employment barrier preventing those with protected characteristics from reaching advanced positions they otherwise might achieve. Coined 22 years ago in a Wall Street Journal piece (Hymowitz and Schellhardt, 1986), the presence of a glass ceiling impeding women's career progression has been reaffirmed by research organizations including the American Association of University Women, Catalyst, the Center for Creative Leadership, the Institute for Women's Policy Research, and the U.S. Glass Ceiling Initiative/Commission. In recent years, employers including American Express, Boeing, Home Depot, Merrill Lynch, Morgan Stanley, and Wal-Mart made headlines regarding their unequal treatment of female employees; corrective measures involved multi-million dollar settlements and procedural changes (Morris, 2005; Leonhardt, 2006). In 2008, the national candidacies of Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and Governor Sarah Palin also brought glass ceiling issues into U.S. public dialog (Kristof, 2008; Luo, 2008).
Against this backdrop, today's mostly Generation Y1 (Gen Y) students are preparing to enter the fulltime workforce. The largest generation since the Baby Boomers2, Gen Y joins the workforce when demographic trends predict tightening U.S. labor markets as Baby Boomers reach retirement age (Piktialis, 2004). New workers are increasingly valued (Southard and Lewis, 2004), especially those with post-secondary education as the economy's need for skills continues to heighten (America's Dynamic Workforce, 2007). Therefore, U.S. employers are seeking to recruit, retain, and motivate Gen Y employees (Hira, 2007), half of whom expect to be promoted in less than two years and twothirds of whom expect to move on from their job within five years (Walker, 2006).
As a result, Gen Y and its impact on the workplace are receiving academic, practitioner, and media attention (Eisner, 2005). Several attributes of Gen Y identified in studies have stimulated this paper: Gen Y is more educated than previous generations (America's Dynamic Workforce, 2007), Gen Y women are completing more education than its men (Dey and Hill, 2007), and Gen Y has been socialized with an expectation of equality and a strong social conscience (Hira, 2007). Many prescriptive pieces have been written on efforts managers can take regarding the glass ceiling. But little research has been done on attitudes of Gen Y men and women regarding gender conditions they will find at work. Those...