Women experience a “gender tenure gap”, lasting in CEO roles at publicly listed companies for shorter periods than men, according to new research which may support the idea that female leaders are subject to a “glass cliff” where they are set up to fail.
The next time this report is referred to it will be “is” not “may”.
The unfortunate thing could actually be that women – on average and in general – are worse at being CEOs than men are. Alpha men – and you don’t get to be a CEO without being alpha something – could simply be better at leading groups of humans than alpha women. This is possible. We are equal in our rights but that is not the same as being the same in all respects.
“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.
Sure. We also need to consider the idea that the glass cliff is toss. Which it could be……
Jordan Peterson has talked about the times, back when he still had a clinical practice, that he was called in to consult by large Toronto law firms. They were having trouble holding on to their female partners.
After speaking to the women he found that they simply weren’t willing to dedicate their lives to adding as many billable hours as they could in the way that men were. There inevitably came a point where they wanted some sort of work/life balance; specifically, they wanted to start families.
It ‘may’ be that women were appointed as a result of an EDI-driven agenda and have proved to be not very good at it.
Without reading the original paper it’s hard to interpret the report, but this pushing an agenda can easily exploit the academic reticence to state absolutes. There’s lots of ‘mays’, ‘mights’ and ‘seems’ in academic papers.
‘appointing women is “now the norm”’
Will be interesting to see whether the new normal of women CEO’s will get better results than men.
I don’t expect this to happen, but I’ll be entertained if I’m proven wrong!!
If women were any good at running things then the NHS would be the most efficient organisation in the country……..
The unfortunate thing could actually be that women – on average and in general – are worse at being CEOs than men are
It’s hard to think of any real life examples that might disprove this. Tho the same applies to our social climbing Bharat friends, if your employer’s board starts looking like the staff of a curry restaurant you can expect redundancies.
’Will be interesting to see whether the new normal of women CEO’s will get better results than men.’
Remember when we were constantly told that having more female judges would make the justice system work better, Boganboy?
How’d it turn out?
Jim: not to mention the education system.
If you try hard enough, you can always find that your favoured group might be being victimised in some fashion.
A company wants to be seen doing the “modern” thing – having a woman CEO. Fred has refused to put on a dress and call himself/herself Freda. That only leaves the bint from HR; you can guess the rest.
Must admit I’d never heard of the push for female judges Julia.
Of course, if I was running things, they’d all be like Judge Jefferys.
Women are great in senior management positions
Just look at how well Alyssa Heinschied (sp?) ran Bud Light!
Straight into the ground.
Her staff carried notebooks to record how happy they were that day, instead of concentrating on selling beer.
She took a brand known for appealing to down to earth, country, conservative male markets and decided to partner with one of the most annoying, decisive men-women on earth. Obviously it was the patriarchy ‘s fault the brand crashed and burned, not hers. Lol
Cherny D – I don’t think she was “running” Bud Light othewr than in the sense of “into the ground with sales down something like 17%.
On a brighter note, Anheuser Busch now have the benefit of 20:20 Heinerscheidt.
Anyone advocating for female CEO’s should note the abject failure of the token running John Lewis into the ground.
A blog commenter I see around said something interesting recently. Apparently it’s his habit to ask himself from time to time whether there’s anything he’d believed for ages that is, perhaps, wrong.
He now doubts his belief that women would shine in top jobs. He cites Thatcher as an exception – he should have added Elizabeth II in my view. Anyway, he alluded to the dismal uselessness of Lady Hallett and her intellectual lazy, bogus enquiry. (The adjectives are mine, the sentiments mine and his, I think.)
It’s not just English judges. There’s been similarly crap stuff recently from Lady Dorrian, Lord Justice Clerk of Scotland.
Maybe the number of women with the intellect, the character, and the appetite for work necessary for many top jobs is so limited that those promoted on the let’s-appoint-a-lassie argument will usually be no bloody good.
How sad, but if it is so, it is so.
The very competent and popular CEO of a large not for profit I do some volunteering for retired a year ago and the Board decided to appoint 2 women as joint CEOs.
Joint CEOs is a recipe for disaster but 2 women? I then saw their photographs and CVs on the website and it had disaster written all over it. It wasn’t long before one of them because CFO or similar and then left and the other to peruse here career elsewhere or some similar words. I haven’t been around recently to find out what really happened but from stories I heard she was probably given an option.
I understand the Board’s thinking, the organisation relies on a lot of support from statutory bodies and they were obviously trying to show willing, but I’ll bet they don’t go down the diversity hire path again, not lease because the Chairman has had to step in as interim CEO and he’ll be getting hell from his wife over it because he’s supposed to be retired and he already does a lot of other charity work.
Maybe the number of women with the intellect, the character, and the appetite for work necessary for many top jobs is so limited that those promoted on the let’s-appoint-a-lassie argument will usually be no bloody good.
In other words just like every other quota-driven minority hiring policy.
That’s a fine example from Flubber.
Troilus Twat, friend of brazilian electricians everywhere and a token of alphanumeric diversity was going to be a hard act to better but then along comes Sir Mark “Jihad” Rowley and makes the Met even more of a joke.
Flubber
Did you mean Dame Sharon White, career civil servant before her singularly unsuccessful albeit baffling tenure at John Lewis or her protégée the former co-op big wig and “turnaround expert” Pippa Wicks who barely lasted 3 years on the sinking ship before being replaced by long-time JL/Waitrose power skirt Naomi Simcock.
Their upper echelon hiring practices nowadays are even woker than their Christmas ads.
I’ve seen a female boss oversee an all-male technical team, and it worked because her skills complemented the men’s. The men did all the detailed technical work, while she did the tedious project management stuff and got them to talk to each other without hurting each other’s egos.
Aye, Andrew, but the question isn’t about individuals but about their numbers.
Another way of looking at it:
All people seek to pursue what they perceive as their own personal advantage.
So a good CEO will be one where his own personal advantage is perceived as aligning with the organisation he’s CEO of.
Maybe women perceive their personal advantage lying in other directions?
Note that it’s the same self interest that gets them to the top. But it’s past that that may be different.
‘Joint CEOs is a recipe for disaster but 2 women?’
BiND. You’re reminding me of the heroic revolution in Sudan where the army and the RSF combined to get rid of wicked al Bashir.
Alas now the army and the RSF are fighting it out to decide who’s top dog. All the whiners who were pushing to get rid of Bash and introduce ‘democracy’ are now whinging about the present civil war. And of course arguing that those horrid Western racists should wave a magic money wand and make everything turn out the way they want.
Still, I agree that if the two rulers were women it’d be worse.