Breaking The Glass Ceiling Only To Fall Off The Glass Cliff

Bershidsky explains why women CEOs get fired more often than men:

This is not evidence of male superiority on the job, but of the so-called glass cliff theory. According to this, women and other “occupational minorities,” such as people with a different skin color, tend to get appointed to top jobs when a company needs saving. When these women fail — and in a crisis, the probability of failure is higher — boardrooms fall back on tradition. They replace the women with white men who have lots of industry experience. …

“Glass cliff” hires are prominent among the 23 female chief executives who run Fortune 500 companies: Marissa Mayer at Yahoo!, Meg Whitman at Hewlett-Packard, Mary Barra at General Motors and Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelez (formerly Kraft). They were appointed to effect breakthroughs and turnarounds. In many such situations (Barra is an exception), female chief executives are brought in from outside the company. Strategy& confirms that 35 percent of incoming female CEOs are outsiders, versus 22 percent for men.