Forget 'glass ceiling,' new study finds women likely to be set up to fall off of 'glass cliff'

You've heard of the glass ceiling, but do you know about the "glass cliff"? A new study has found that women may have been set up to fail, even in top-most roles like CEOs or heads of companies.

An analysis of companies listed in 12 stock exchanges globally found that since 2018, women have had an average of 5.2 years as chief executives, while men lasted an average of 8.1 years.

The findings

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The analysis was conducted by Russell Reynolds, an executive search and leadership firm. It found that between men and women, there is a huge tenure gap.

Laura Sanderson, the UK head of Russell Reynolds, said that the tenure gap could partly be explained because some men have been in the chief executive chair for decades. One, she said, has been in the post for 39 years.

"While the sample size is too small to be significant, we also need to consider whether the data may support the glass cliff theory,"she said, as quoted by The Guardian.

What is the glass cliff theory?

The glass cliff theory poses that women are more likely to be appointed as leaders when an organisation or company is in a time of crisis. This is often so that the female executives' position is seen as more precarious than their male counterparts.

Previously, in 2005, research by Researchers at the University of Exeter found that women are more likely to be appointed as board members after a company's share price had performed badly.

Michelle Ryan, director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Australian National University in Canberra, who is one of the two researchers behind the 2005 research, said that Reynold's analysis was "robust and added to the work in this area".

"If women are more likely to take on leadership roles in times of crisis, then it follows that their time in office is likely to be stressful, more heavily scrutinised and shorter in tenure," she remarked.

She added that "this reduced tenure could be for a number of reasons – because there is often higher turnover in times of crisis, because they are judged as not performing well, even though poor performance was in train before their appointment, or because when things start to turn around, men come back into leadership roles."

(With inputs from agencies)