pink ceiling

Noun

pink ceiling (plural pink ceilings)

1. An informal (and often unacknowledged) barrier to promotion or advancement, in employment and elsewhere, for gay and lesbian people.
   • That was nearly twenty years ago, and the Rev. David Norgard, who now serves as rector of St. John the Evangelist Episcopal Church in San Francisco, has spent much of those two decades quietly cracking the pink ceiling in the Episcopal Church.1996 June 29, Don Lattin, “Gay Priest Is Cracking Through the Bias Ceiling”, in The San Francisco Chronicle
   • On September 21, 1998, the American TV channel NBC broadcast the first episode of their new sitcom Will And Grace. There was some advance interest among gay viewers and city sophisticates as it marked the shattering of the "pink ceiling" - there were now homosexual lead characters on a major...2004 August 29, Stephan Phelan, “Where There's A Will there's a Grace”, in The Sunday Herald

   Synonyms:

   rainbow ceiling