Most people know about the glass ceiling : the invisible barrier that keeps women from reaching top leadership positions. Researchers have also identified the glass cliff , where women are placed in leadership roles during times of crisis, and the glass escalator , where men in female-dominated fields get fast-tracked into management.
These concepts all assume careers move up. Increasingly, however, they do not. More people are building careers sideways - taking on extra gigs, branching into new skill areas or negotiating customized roles within their organizations. We call this lateral work.
As companies flatten their hierarchies and organize around project-based work , lateral moves have become the new career ladder. According to Statistics Canada, roughly 2.4 million Canadians - nearly nine per cent of the working-age population - engaged in some form of gig work in 2022.
This is especially true for freelancers, who must constantly seek out new clients and new income streams to advance. For women, advancing this way comes with added challenges. Our research shows that they hit a different kind of invisible barrier - the "glass wall."
The freelancing catch-22
Freelancers face a well-documented dilemma: you need experience to get hired, but you need to get hired to gain experience .
The standard advice is to start as a specialist, build a reputation, then gradually branch out into new areas of work. A songwriter may focus on specializing in writing top lines but later take on writing lyrics. A cinematographer might move into production design. This kind of lateral expansion is meant to signal ambition and versatility .
In our research , we tested whether this advice works equally for men and women by tracking the careers of more than 8,000 K-pop songwriters.
When men expanded into new work roles, they were seen as strategic and ambitious, and their career prospects improved. But when women made the exact same move, they were perceived as less in control of their careers, and their prospects did not improve. This is the glass wall in action: the invisible barrier that limits women's career opportunities when they try to expand into new roles.
In two follow-up experiments with participants from South Korea and the United States, we found that these patterns stem from gender stereotypes about agency. Agency - the sense that a person is acting deliberately and on their own terms - is a trait that is historically associated with men more than women .
Men's lateral moves are read as deliberate career moves, while women's are read as reactions to circumstance - signs they are impulsive, accommodating or that they failed in their original role. That gap in perceived agency, in turn, lowers how competent and committed women are seen to be.
Not just a freelancing problem
Although we identified the glass wall in freelancing, the dynamic almost certainly extends into conventional workplaces as well. The modern workplace increasingly expects employees to manage their own career trajectories.
Employees are expected to negotiate customized work arrangements , take on responsibilities outside their original job descriptions and signal their versatility through lateral moves.
In all of these cases, workers are doing something similar to the role expansion we studied: branching into new areas under conditions of ambiguity, where it is hard for others to evaluate their competence upfront.
Our theory predicts that in these situations - where workers have autonomy and evaluations are uncertain - gender stereotypes can creep in.
The presence of a glass wall matters now more than ever. The McKinsey Women in the Workplace report found that up to 19 per cent of organizations have scaled back flexible work options and up to 17 per cent have reduced diversity and inclusion resources.
The pay data tells a similar story. Statistics Canada data from 2025 shows that women aged 15 and older earned 88 cents for every dollar earned by men, and the gap is wider still for racialized and Indigenous women. In the United States, women now earn 82 cents per dollar .
Among freelancers, the gap is larger still. A 2024 analysis found that women quote approximately 10 per cent lower hourly rates than men . With fewer structures governing how lateral moves are evaluated, gender stereotypes are more likely to shape who gets the next opportunity.
What can be done
Addressing the glass wall requires action on several fronts. Most companies track whether men and women are promoted at equal rates . However, few track what happens when employees move sideways. Auditing lateral move outcomes by gender would be a practical first step.
For clients and hiring managers, the glass wall represents a missed opportunity. Women with multiple skill sets are, in effect, an undervalued talent pool; they are likely to be discounted not because of ability, but because of bias.
Freelancers themselves can take steps too. In our interviews with K-pop songwriters, several women told us that presenting under an incorporated business name, rather than their personal name, helped redirect clients' attention from gender cues to their portfolio alone. This small shift can change the frame substantially.
Finally, for policymakers, accredited certification schemes for skill expansion could help all freelancers, especially women, to credibly signal their investment in new roles. When credentials carry real weight, evaluators have less reason to fall back on gut feelings shaped by stereotypes.
The rise of freelancing and flexible work was supposed to free people from the biases embedded in corporate bureaucracy. Research on gender stereotypes has long suggested that bias does not disappear when formal structures are removed, but rather expands into the space left behind. Our findings bear that out.
As careers become more fluid and self-directed, we need to pay attention not just to who gets promoted, but to who gets credit for growing sideways. The glass wall may be invisible, but its consequences are not.
Yonghoon Lee received funding from Hong Kong Research Grants Council (ECS:26504918), which was completed on 2021
Christy Zhou Koval and Susie Lee do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
