Empathy

Women and Leadership: From Glass Ceilings to Glass Cliffs

Today, more than ever before, women who pierce the glass ceiling are joining the ranks of executive leadership once considered the sole province of men. Despite this progress, few of them hold top positions in government, business, law, and medicine. A global study on the percentage of board seats occupied by women in the largest companies found that women held 19.2% of seats in the US (S&P 500) and 20.8% in Canada (S&P/TSX 60). In Europe and Asia-Pacific, respectfully, their participation ranged from 7% in Portugal (PSI-20) to 35.5% in Norway (OBX Index), and from 3.1% in Japan (TOPIX Core 30) to 19.2% in Australia (S&P/ASX 200). Demand for gender equality in boardrooms is surging, and efforts requesting diversity through lobbies and quotas have peaked. For example, in Canada, a country known for labor-market gender equity, the Ontario Securities Commission recommended that companies listed on the Toronto Stock Exchange disclose how they recruit and select women executives (Canadian Press, 2014). Women's managerial involvement has not been without its critics, however, some of whom have condemned women leaders for ruining firm performance:

At best, the above claim published in the British press could be seen as a mismatch between society's moral obligation to give women a fair shot at leadership and women's actual performance as leaders. At worst, it could be interpreted as a mismatch between one's gender and one's leadership ability. Stated plainly, women's "unique skills" as organizational leaders are simply ineffective. Given its controversy, this claim led to the burgeoning of studies exploring the relationship between organizational performance and leader gender. Findings from this research unearthed evidence that women breaking through the glass ceiling must overcome an added hurdle in their quest to attain executive roles - that of scaling a glass cliff.

Ryan and Haslam coined the term glass cliff to describe situations in which women, more so than men, are promoted to executive positions in companies with declining performances. After scrutinizing Judge's  original FTSE 100 data, and comparing 15 companies with female board member appointments to 16 with male appointments, they found that while men tended to be selected during stable stock market conditions, women were chosen when market conditions were depressed in the 5 months preceding the appointments. The authors argued that women were more likely than men to assume executive positions in firms that were already associated with poor performance thereby showing preliminary evidence that board of directors seemed to be biased in favor of female leaders during crises. This "think crisis-think female" heuristic meant that these women were perched on a fragile glass cliff because their roles entailed a greater risk of failure. As such, the authors considered the attack to be unjust because women inherited firms with less stability compared to men. To discover more evidence, Haslam and Ryan then carried out the first experimental studies on glass cliffs by asking graduate management students (Study 1; N = 95), high school students (Study 2; N = 85), and business leaders (Study 3; N = 83) to select an individual from a list of candidates to lead either a thriving or a failing hypothetical firm. Consistent with their original prediction, participants across studies were more likely to appoint a female leader when the business was declining rather than improving. Moreover, Haslam and Ryan provided the first empirical evidence that people from different life stages and occupations harbor similar mental associations linking women leaders to crisis situations. In recent years, other scholars have found support for glass cliffs. For example, Mulcahy and Linehan compared 138 firms that experienced a financial loss to those that reported a profit during a 3-year period from 2004 to 2006. Specifically, they explored whether changes in gender diversity had taken place in the firms' board composition following the release of financial results. As expected, firms having reported a financial loss witnessed an increase in the number of women hired on their boards compared to those that had reported a profit.

We argue that, similar to the way in which glass ceilings have represented gender inequality in promotion opportunities, glass cliffs can now be seen as representing gender inequality in assignment opportunities. Notwithstanding the discriminatory practices that women have had to endure, including their nomination for precarious leadership positions, our society's current moral stance on the need for unbiased decision making in the workplace is not only making such practices more noticeable, but it is also asking us to confront them with greater urgency. Therefore, this mismatch between a social environment which was once supportive of an exclusive male hegemony and a current one that condemns such an unfair advantage constitutes one possibility that may explain why glass cliffs are now coming to the fore as heated ethical dilemmas. But what explains the decision-making bias to select women leaders in times of crisis? Our primary purpose is to offer an original explanation for women's glass cliff appointments by first asking: Are humans predisposed to perceive women - and by extension women leaders - as being more empathic than men and, consequently, as nurturing figures that are sought for support during a crisis? Our secondary goal is to show that not all organizational crises are isomorphic and thus distinguish not only between the types of crises that occur, but also the intensity or severity with which they unfold. If women are said to possess qualities that enable them to deal with crises, then investigating contextual variation in glass cliffs in these two respects seems warranted. Finally, we broaden our framework to encompass two other Darwinian perspectives through which glass cliffs could be analyzed, namely behavioral ecology and cultural evolution.

In the sections that follow, we first define empathy and provide an exposé of evolutionary psychology meant to explain its biological etiology. Second, we present evidence of women's empathic advantage over men and explain the implications of this individual difference for organizational leadership in crisis situations. Third, we explore factors that describe under which conditions women leaders are likely to be selected for glass cliff appointments. Fourth, we usher in other evolutionary approaches to behavior in an effort to show how these can enrich the discussion surrounding the onset of glass cliffs. Lastly, we reiterate the importance of evolutionary theorizing and people's need to be aware of their subconscious biases before concluding with some ideas for future exploration and implications for managerial practice.