Sexism: Women were being set up to fail #GlassCliff

9/03/2018

And what would you say if I told you that the number of female C.E.O.’s in the Fortune 500 recently hit an all-time high? It’s cause for celebration, right? But let’s look at the actual numbers. Out of those 500 companies, there were, as of early 2018, 27 female C.E.O.’s. 5.4 percent.
Why? We are several decades into a revolution that brought hundreds of millions of women into the global workforce. And 40 percent of managers are women. So what’s keeping more of them from reaching the top? To be sure, it’s a complex question with a number of factors, some of which you’ve surely thought about. But there’s one you probably haven’t thought about; probably haven’t even heard of it. Let’s start … here.
...Ryan’s analysis suggested that women were being set up to fail, whether intentionally or not. Such a failure would reflect poorly not only on the woman in question, but quite possibly on female candidates to follow. Ryan’s research did have its limitations. It covered only British companies and only board members, not C.E.O.’s. Also, it measured companies’ stock prices rather than their actual performance. Still, the paper got a lot of attention in social-psychology circles, and it inspired some American researchers to pick up the glass-cliff thread.