HRpedia: 'The glass cliff'
No, nothing to do with Willy Wonka – it's the precipice that female CEOs get thrown offGlass cliff, n.
So, what is it? Something your fifties pop-loving auntie keeps on her mantelpiece? Hell, no. No frivolity here. A glass cliff is (as defined by the University of Exeter) is ‘A senior job or important project, particularly one given to a woman, with a high risk of failure.’
It’s a serious issue and one which has been in the news again over the last couple of weeks with the sackings of Jill Abramson and Natalie Nougayrède from the New York Times and Le Monde respectively.
These dismissals seem to highlight that more often than not, when women manage to break through the glass ceiling, it tends to be to take jobs that no-one else actually wants and aren’t likely to prove sustainable over the long term.
Research into this phenomenon continues apace. At the University of Exeter, Michelle Ryan (no, not the one from EastEnders) is working with Queensland-based colleague Alex Haslam to make sense of it all. One specific issue they’re looking into is why on earth women want to take these rubbishy roles in the first place.
Ryan and Exeter are sure that:
The glass cliff is a robust phenomenon that is not isolated to a particular context or participant group… Gender has a causal role to play in the appointment of women to glass cliff positions.
Glass on glass
Over in the US, Professor Christy Glass (and yes, that is her real surname – shame her given name isn’t Clifford) says research has provided ‘strong and significant evidence of the glass cliff. In the NCAA [National Collegiate Athletic Association], minority coaches are much more likely to be promoted to losing teams. And in the Fortune 500, women and minorities are much more likely to be promoted to CEO in firms that are struggling in terms of performance.’
Whilst the New York Times claims that the ‘ouster’ of Abramson is due to her management style, commentators such The Guardian’s Emily Bell point out that the actual output of her tenure was a substantial improvement on previous incumbents of the editor’s seat. Good old-fashioned sexism might be playing a role here too, then.
The Guardian has also pointed out that women are much more likely to get booted out of CEO positions then men, courtesy of research by Strategy&. (A story, incidentally, shared over one thousand times on Facebook. Nerves have clearly been touched by this.)
Used in practice:
Congratulations, Marjorie, on breaking through the glass ceiling. Now if you don’t mind, we’d like to piece it back together again and put it on its side. And push you over the edge of it.
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