A lower glass ceiling in the public sector?

Using the 2006 col survey, which provides quantitative data comparing the private and public sectors, this article studies women in management positions in both sectors. It distinguishes management status, i.e. being a manager (or an A-level manager in the French public sector) and having managerial responsibilities, i.e. having authority over a team. The article shows that management in the public sector is much more feminized than that in the private sector. It also shows that female managers of the public sector have managerial responsibilities more often than in the private sector, their teams being larger on average. However, after processing the data, these results need to be slightly adjusted: it appears that even if access to management status is just as difficult for women in both sectors, women of the public sector are particularly at a disadvantage when it comes to accessing hierarchical responsibilities, being more experts than managers. Managerial functions being more and more valued in the public sector, the increasing difficulty women meet in managing teams is probably one of the explanations for the persisting glass ceiling that female managers encounter in the public sector.