Identifying the Factors of Glass Ceiling Formation to Promote Women in Management Positions in the Iran

The present research was done in order to, Identifying the Factors of Glass Ceiling Formation to Promote Women in Management Positions in Iran. The Strategy of this resaerch is Grounded Theory and The statistical population of this study was all specialists (108) with phd degree in northwest of the country. The participants were 21 professionals who were selected through purposeful sampling method to point of theoretical saturation. In this study, semi-structured interviews were used to collect data and the qualitative findings of the study were analysed by maxqda software. Accuracy criteria (credibility and fitness) were used to determine the reliability and validity of data collection method and the reliability of the findings was checked by interrater reliability method(reliability among coders = 0/875). The findings of the study indicates that more attention was paid to the social, cultural, organizational, personal, family and managerial factors and the glass ceiling consists of three layers with title individual layer, organizational layer and ultrastructure layer. Coding showed that: the why for glass ceiling is philosophical basice, intellectual parardigm, organizational factor and ultrastructure factor, the what for glass ceiling is manifestatin of individual, organizational and ultrastructure and the process of glass ceiling formation is the result of both organizational and ultrastructure factors mediated by individual agents.