Beware the Glass Cliff, (Female) CEOs

Context: Only one among the leading 50 companies in India is led by women. It points towards a glaring gender gap at the top executive level.

Major gender-specific challenges limiting women’s presence at the CEO level

• Judged more harshly: A 2019 American Psychological Association study found that female CEOs are judged more harshly than their male counterparts when their organisations exhibited ethical failures, such as a cover-up.
  • Consumers’ trust and willingness to support an organisation after a failure is based on the gender of the CEO and the nature of the incident.
  • Women tend to incur greater penalties for ethical transgressions because of persistent gender stereotypes that tend to categorise women as having more community-oriented traits than men.
• Women leaders also tend to be more expendable in the corporate world: The well-networked male business leaders often tend to resurface and survive in their business ‘boys’ clubs’.
  • But women leaders pay a heavier price for any public ignominy and are seldom seen making a comeback.
• Phenomenon of ‘glass cliff’: That is the tendency of organisations to favour women and the other marginalised for leadership positions over men during a period of crisis and thereby putting them at a higher risk of failure.

Way forward

• Address the glaring need for coaching, sensitisation and career development for women CEOs: The baggage of social conditioning, cultural nuances and unconscious biases need to be unlearned in the process.