Precarious Leadership Positions Research Articles

The Glass Cliff: Evidence that Women are Over‐Represented in Precarious Leadership Positions

AbstractThere has been much research and conjecture concerning the barriers women face in trying to climb the corporate ladder, with evidence suggesting that they typically confront a ‘glass ceiling’ while men are more likely to benefit from a ‘glass escalator’. But what happens when women do achieve leadership roles? And what sorts of positions are they given? This paper argues that while women are now achieving more high profile positions, they are more likely than men to find themselves on a ‘glass cliff’, such that their positions are risky or precarious. This hypothesis was investigated in an archival study examining the performance of FTSE 100 companies before and after the appointment of a male or female board member. The study revealed that during a period of overall stock‐market decline those companies who appointed women to their boards were more likely to have experienced consistently bad performance in the preceding five months than those who appointed men. These results expose an additional, largely invisible, hurdle that women need to overcome in the workplace. Implications for the evaluation of women leaders are discussed and directions for future research are outlined.

Women's Mobility in the Corporation: A Critique of the Politics of Optimism

1Pamela Stone Cain, "Prospects for Pay Equity in a Changing Economy,' in Comparable Worth: New Directionsfor Research, ed. Heidi Hartmann (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1985), 137-65, esp. 154-55. William Greer, "Women Gain a Majority in Jobs," New York Times (March 19, 1986), sec. C, 17, 20; and "Employed Persons, by Sex, Race, and Occupation: 1985," in Statistical Abstract of the United States: 1987 (Washington, D.C.: U.S. Bureau of the Census, 1986), 385, table no. 657. According to researchers such as Andrea Beller, most of the increases in occupational sex integration have occurred within white-collar employment. In Beller's "Trends in Occupational Segregation by Sex and Race, 19601981," in Sex Segregation in the Workplace: Trends, Explanations, Remedies, ed. Barbara Reskin (Washington, D.C.: National Academy Press, 1984), 11-26, Beller disaggregates white-collar occupations to disclose those that have contributed most to declining sex segregation. She reports that rapidly growing occupations, including accountant, bank officer, and financial manager, which women entered in disproportionate numbers from men, contributed greatly to the measured reduction in