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anonymous Dr. Mannly Sociology 2-29-00 Invisible Mechanisms The “glass escalator” is the term the author uses to define an invisible phenomenon she sees propelling men in women’s fields of work. Williams is certain that men are pushed ahead when in predominately female jobs and slightly skews her research data because of this slant. Although she jumps to her conclusions at times, overall Williams comes up with satisfactory findings based on thorough research techniques that men and women are not equally represented in certain professions because of discrimination. A saving grace of Williams paper is that she states on the first page: “Although there are many possible reasons for the continuing preponderance of women in these fields (nurses, elementary teachers, librarians and social workers), the focus of this paper is discrimination.” (Pg. 295) She states that men are pressured to move out of traditionally female held positions to higher status, and usually higher paying, jobs simply because they are male. She also says that men are given this positions on a much more frequent basis not based on merit, but because they are male. The problem with this opinion of the author is that the