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Within civil service, women’s careers are continuing to hit a glass ceiling. Going beyond the statistics, this analysis of civil service career trajectories in the Ministry of Culture reveals the structural nature of these inequalities. Based on accounts given by 65 senior management staff, (central civil service and Regional Directorates for Cultural Affairs), this sociological study provides ample evidence of career paths with clearly gendered biases. Firstly, whilst three quarters of men interviewed experienced an upward trajectory, more than half of the women plateaued. Furthermore, these ascending and plateauing trajectories are not homogeneous, as the division into five main trajectory typologies reveals. The upward trajectories show that the Ministry of Culture offers good onward career progressions almost exclusively to men, rewarding only a few “good students of career mobility” (male and female) and admitting only rare female “shooting stars”. Careers which hit a ceiling include, on the one hand, those in “mobility traps”, whereby those from other departments (in large part, men) are no longer able to break into the Ministry of Culture, and on the other hand, “indigenous prisoners” women, who have spent their entire careers in the Culture division without being able to move up the ladder.