In May 2021, art historian and curator Laurence des Cars became the first woman to be appointed president of the Louvre in its 228-year history. des Cars’ appointment comes at a time when visitor numbers in museums all over the world have hit an all-time low due to the pandemic. The Louvre in France, which welcomed 10 million visitors in 2018, the highest yet, saw only 2.8 million last year.
It remains to be seen whether des Cars can turn the museum’s fortunes around or if she will meet the same fate as Carol Bartz, who was appointed CEO of Yahoo in 2009 to salvage the struggling Internet giant. A little over two-and-a-half years into her four-year contract, Bartz was unceremoniously fired.
Bartz is often held up as a prime example of the glass cliff.
What is the glass cliff?
Glass cliff refers to a situation where women are promoted to high positions during times of crisis, when the possibility of them failing is a lot higher. Unlike the glass ceiling, which refers to the unspoken and unseen limit to which a woman can rise in an organisation, glass cliff serves as a win-win for the organisation.
Elevating a woman to the top job is a PR win for a company - companies faced with a crisis especially can use the positive PR. Should she succeed, the board gets to pat its back; should she fail, the board still emerges as being progressive and can go back to appointing a man in the same position without reproach. For the woman, though, glass cliff positions come with more downsides: high stress, possible burnout, and Damocles’ Sword of failure hanging over her head.
The term glass cliff was born out of a counter study to a 2003 article in The Times (of London) that cited data and claimed that companies with more women on their boards had performed worse than those with only men.
It wasn’t long before Michelle K. Ryan and Alexander Haslam, researchers at the University of Exeter in the UK, discovered a pattern: appointment of women on the boards came after those companies' share prices had dropped and not vice versa. The companies' poor performance had nothing to do with the appointment of women.
Examples of women in glass cliff positions
Recent history is riddled with women being appointed to top jobs in moments of crisis. A year after Carol Bartz’s firing, Yahoo appointed Marissa Mayer at a time when the company had lost the majority of its market share to Google.
Similarly, Jill Abramson took over as the editor of The New York Times in 2011, when newspapers were struggling against internet upstarts like Buzzfeed. Less than three years later, Abramson was fired.
Why does the glass cliff phenomenon occur?
Shifting the focus from the company to the leader, and being able to pin any failures on them is the most obvious answer. It also stands to reason that a woman leader is likely to take up the top job, the crisis notwithstanding, mostly because she’s unlikely to be offered that position under normal circumstances.
However, Michelle Ryan, the Exeter researcher who helped coin the term, has yet another explanation. She tells Stephen J. Dubner, host of the Freakonomics podcast: “When everything is going well, we find that stereotypically masculine traits are more likely to be seen as desirable. So, if share price is up, or steady, then we’re more likely to want leaders who are ambitious, and forceful, and competitive. These are our stereotypically masculine traits. This is a finding that’s been in the literature since the 1970s and that’s called the ‘think manager, think male’ association. So, when everything is going well, we have ‘think manager, think male’. When things are going badly, we have ‘think crisis, think female’.”
Bartz, Abramson, des Cars are all instances of our society’s almost Jungian need to turn to a mother figure in times of crisis. That, to put it mildly, is messed up.
What can be done to avoid putting women in glass cliff positions?
As in life, there is no easy answer to this.
In the same Freakonomics podcast, economist Olga Shurchkov, suggests implementing quotas. “In some Scandinavian countries, for example, they’ve actually instituted quotas for a certain ratio of women represented on boards of companies, for example,” she says. Shurchkov adds, “But forcing women into these leadership roles does actually backfire a little bit, because it’s hard to find enough experienced women at that level to fill those positions.”
Even she admits there’s no straight answer except “a societal shift in perceptions of what’s acceptable and what’s going to be productive for the long run”.
Admittedly, this can be frustrating.
But if you, like me, are a man, here is my submission: Stop paying lip service to the cause. If you say something, do it. Even better, don’t say anything and do it anyway.
Be an ally and don’t try to appropriate the cause; this is not about you, so resist the temptation to pat yourself on the back and certainly don’t expect someone else to pat you either.
This list of what we should do can go on, but let me leave you with one final ‘to do’, if I may: Be quiet and listen. The next time your female peers, juniors, bosses, or even the women in your family are speaking up, don’t make it about yourself. Don’t interrupt, don’t offer your views unless specifically asked for. Just listen.
Happy International Women’s Day.
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