Shatter the Glass Ceiling
Part of Final Year Project - 2019
This project is about smashing through the glass ceiling which is a metaphor to describe the invisible barriers which are in front of women which restrict us from receiving pay rises and promotions.
The slow motion video shows the glass ceiling being smashed with a hammer and the publication provides information about the importance of destroying these restrictions. A3 prints also went up in Bristol city centre.
“Glass ceiling” is a metaphor for the hard-to-see informal barriers that keep women from getting promotions, pay rises and further opportunities which men get much easier. It has been around for 40 years and was invented by a woman called Marilyn Loden. Whilst a lot has changed for working women, the metaphor remains relevant in symbolising the barrier to gender equality. There is still a pay gap in the UK of 17.9% and in the majority of companies the highest paid jobs are dominated by men.
To demonstrate that the glass ceiling above women needs to be broken, I filmed myself shattering it with a hammer. Putting the films into slow motion allowed the viewer to see all the individual shards of glass get broken. The text gives content to what’s happening in the film. The printed A2 poster was placed around Bristol and showed frame by frame what happened in the video with the bold words “shatter the glass ceiling”.
To round the project off for all aspects of the pay gap I covered in my final year project (2019), I produced a publication with work from the Design Pay Gap, Calling out Companies, Protesting the Pay Gap and Shatter the Glass Ceiling. It’s 64 pages and slightly bigger than A5, containing a variety of information on the history and future of the pay gap in the UK.
Imagery for this came from scanning in shards of broken glass gathered from my Shatter the Glass Ceiling films and the other project’s final outcomes. The publication contains a variety of mediums from illustration, photography, photo manipulation but by using the blue and white duo tone the various content design remains consistent throughout.
The aim of the publication is to educate the viewer on the pay gap in various sectors and the history behind the pay gap; how it’s decreased but still not completely disappeared. It informs the audience of the fight women have fought to shatter the glass ceiling and to encourage younger women to continue to fight to shatter it.
