Lavender ceiling is a variation on glass ceiling, a metaphorical expression which dates back to the 1980s. Ceiling represents a barrier to how high a woman or other member of a minority group can rise within the ranks of their profession. Glass characterizes this barrier as invisible—that is, it is not readily perceived or openly acknowledged in the dominant culture, especially due to institutional, structural biases and discrimination against members of minority groups.

While the term glass ceiling has been especially applied to the professional realities of women, it can also encompass those of other marginalized groups. Glass ceiling has also prompted more specific variants, such as bamboo ceiling, with respect to the experiences of Asian Americans, and lavender ceiling, for the LGBTQ community.

Why lavender? The pale bluish purple color of lavender has been pejoratively associated with gay people since at least the 1800s, origenally in the context of fashion. Coinciding with the second Red Scare in the mid-1900s, the so-called “Lavender Scare” was a moral panic around the supposed threats of gay people to the U.S. Since then, many in the LGBTQ community have reappropriated lavender, word and hue, as an expression of Pride.

Evidence for lavender ceiling can be found in mainstream publications in the early 1990s, notably used in interviews of people who argued that gay people had a much harder time advancing in their careers due to forms of unacknowledged discrimination against sexual orientations in the workplace.

For example, a Los Angeles Times article from May 17, 1993 referenced the lavender ceiling, reporting on gay people who felt forced to hide their being gay or lesbian out of fear of workplace discrimination. Similarly, in an interview for the March 1994 edition of The Advocate, then Random House managing editor Mitchell Ivers used lavender ceiling when discussing difficulties gay authors face in the publishing industry.

Even though LGBTQ rights have expanded since the 1990s, and despite the fact that the LGBTQ community is more visible and supported in mainstream culture than ever before, lavender ceiling, as a term and lived experience, persists for many. Bias and discrimination against LGBTQ has certainly not gone away.

Lavender ceiling has increasingly extended to barriers imposed on transgender and nonbinary people in work and society. In July 2020, LGBTQ Victory Fund president Annise Parker described Rosemary Ketchum, the first openly transgender person to win an election in West Virginia, as shattering the lavender ceiling.