The Glass Cliﬀ: Evidence that Women are
Over-Represented in Precarious
Leadership Positions
Michelle K. Ryan and S. Alexander Haslam
School of Psychology, University of Exeter, Exeter EX4 4QG, UK
Corresponding author email: M.Ryan@exeter.ac.uk
There has been much research and conjecture concerning the barriers women face in
trying to climb the corporate ladder, with evidence suggesting that they typically
confront a ‘glass ceiling’ while men are more likely to beneﬁt from a ‘glass escalator’.
But what happens when women do achieve leadership roles? And what sorts of positions
are they given? This paper argues that while women are now achieving more high proﬁle
positions, they are more likely than men to ﬁnd themselves on a ‘glass cliﬀ’, such that
their positions are risky or precarious. This hypothesis was investigated in an archival
study examining the performance of FTSE 100 companies before and after the
appointment of a male or female board member. The study revealed that during a period
of overall stock-market decline those companies who appointed women to their boards
were more likely to have experienced consistently bad performance in the preceding
ﬁve months than those who appointed men. These results expose an additional, largely
invisible, hurdle that women need to overcome in the workplace. Implications for the
evaluation of women leaders are discussed and directions for future research are
outlined.
There is little doubt that women continue to be
disadvantaged in the workplace and underrepresented
in leadership positions (Adler, 2000;
Davidson and Burke, 2000; Nieva and Gutek,
1981). Evidence suggests that while women are
typically confronted by an invisible barrier
preventing their rise into leadership ranks, the
‘glass ceiling’ (The corporate woman, 1986;
Kanter, 1977; Morrison, White and Van Velsor,
1987), men (particularly those in female-dominated
professions) are more likely to be conveyed
into management positions by means of a ‘glass
escalator’ (Williams, 1992). However, recent
reports and research reveal that women are
beginning to break through the glass ceiling that
has historically prevented them from achieving
leadership positions in organizations (e.g.
Davidson and Cooper, 1992; Dreher, 2002;
Goodman, Fields and Blum, 2003; McRae,
1995; Stroh, Langlands and Simpson, 2004).
However, despite these advances, evidence
suggests that, once women attain these leadership
roles, their performance is often placed under
close scrutiny (e.g. Eagly, Karau and Makhijani,
1995) and their evaluation is not always positive.
While research suggests that women tend to
receive positive evaluations when their leadership
roles are deﬁned in feminine terms, on traditional,
masculine measures of leadership women’s
leadership eﬀectiveness is often perceived to be
lower than that of men (Bartol and Butterﬁeld,
1976; Eagly and Karau, 1991, 2002; Eagly et al.,
1995; Eagly, Makhijani and Klonsky, 1992).
Furthermore, attitudes within the workplace
suggest that workers prefer male supervisors to
female ones (e.g. Simon and Landis, 1989) and
that many men and male managers remain
unconvinced about the eﬀectiveness of women
leaders (Bowen, Swim, and Jacobs, 2000; Eagly
et al., 1992; Sczesny, 2003; Sutton and Moore,
British Journal of Management, Vol. 16, 81–90 (2005)
DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-8551.2005.00433.x
r 2005 British Academy of Management
1985). These attitudes derive from, and contribute
to, what Schein (2001, p. 675) refers to as a
‘think managerFthink male’ bias.
Are women leaders a hindrance?
A recent example of the scrutiny to which women
leaders are exposed is provided by a lead article in
The Times (Judge, 2003): Women on the Board:
Help or Hindrance? Noting that more women are
securing positions on company boards, Judge
goes on to suggest that, although this development
is seen as positive within the business and
general community, in fact women leaders are
having a negative impact on company performance.
Thus she argues:
‘So much for smashing the glass ceiling and using
their unique skills to enhance the performance of
Britain’s biggest companies. The triumphant march
of women into the country’s boardrooms has
instead wreaked havoc on companies’ performance
and share prices.’ (Judge, 2003, p. 21)
To support this argument the article presents data
suggesting that companies with women on their
boards tend to perform more poorly than those
whose boards are wholly male. Using an index
compiled by the Cranﬁeld School of Management
(Singh and Vinnicombe, 2003) which ranks the
FTSE 100 companies in relation to the percentage
of women on their boards of directors, Judge
(2003) reports that of the top ten companies in the
index (i.e. those with the highest percentage of
women on their boards), six have underperformed
relative to the FTSE 100 throughout 2003. In
contrast, Judge reports that the ﬁve companies on
the bottom of the index – companies that are
wholly male – have all outperformed the FTSE
100 in 2003. From this analysis Judge concludes
that ‘corporate Britain may be better oﬀ without
women on the board’ (p. 21).
Problems with the analysis
However, on their own, these ﬁgures are far from
conclusive and a number of serious methodological
problems can be identiﬁed in Judge’s (2003)
analysis. First, the article reports no statistical
analysis, stating simply that six of the top ten
companies underperformed. Furthermore, closer
examination of the original Cranﬁeld Index (Singh
and Vinnicombe, 2003) reveals that, curiously,
Judge (2003) failed to report the performance of
the two companies at the very bottom of the index
(i.e. those with the lowest percentage of women on
board). Importantly, both of these companies
underperformed relative to the FTSE 100 in 2003.
Therefore, a more complete picture indicates that
six of the ten top companies with women directors
(i.e. 60%) underperformed relative to the FTSE
100, while two of the bottom ﬁve companies
without women directors (40%) under-performed
– a diﬀerence that is far from statistically
signiﬁcant (w2
(1) 5 0.40 p 5 0.53).
In addition, the measures of women in leadership
and of company performance used by Judge
(2003) are broad and loosely deﬁned. Women in
leadership is operationalized simply as the percentage
of women on the board of a given company
– a measure that takes into account neither (a)
changes in the number of women on the board of a
given company, nor (b) their date of appointment
or length of service. Similarly, the measure of
company performance, the average share price over
the year relative to the FTSE 100, is crude and does
not take account of ﬂuctuations in performance
over time. Furthermore, even if the direction of the
causal link between women in leadership and
company performance is of the form suggested by
Judge (2003), the crudeness of variable operationalisation
makes it impossible to test this relationship
properly. In particular, an appropriate test of
the relationship would need to take account of a
person’s date of appointment. For example, if a
poor board member has been in situ since 1997
then it is unlikely that the company would only
experience a drop in performance in 2003.
An alternative explanation
Taken together – journalistic licence notwithstanding
– the evidence garnered by Judge (2003)
hardly justiﬁes the conclusion that women are
‘wreaking havoc’ on the ﬁnancial success of
companies. And yet, having said that, her report
raises important issues that demand closer
empirical attention. However, a more sophisticated
analysis is required to examine the purported
link between having women in leadership
positions and a company’s ﬁnancial performance.
Moreover, if such an association can be identiﬁed,
the merit of multiple explanations of the
relationship needs to be considered.
82 M. K. Ryan and S. A. Haslam
In particular, if the relationship identiﬁed by
Judge (2003) holds, one obvious alternative
explanation of the association would simply
involve reversing its causal sequencing (Haslam
and McGarty, 2003). Thus, rather than the
appointment of women leaders precipitating a
drop in company performance, it is equally
plausible that a company’s poor performance
could be a trigger for the appointment of women
to the board. If this is the case, women may be
being preferentially placed in leadership roles
that are associated with an increased risk of
negative consequences. As a result, to the extent
that they are achieving leadership roles, these
may be more precarious than those occupied by
men. Extending the metaphors of the ‘glass
ceiling’ and the ‘glass elevator’, we propose
referring to this predicament as the ‘glass cliﬀ’.
There is considerable anecdotal evidence for
this phenomenon. For example, recently, within
the UK, W.H. Smith has received considerable
coverage in the business news both for its
‘tumbling share prices’, proﬁt falls and proposed
job cuts, and for its appointment of a woman,
Kate Swann, as its CEO (BBC, 2003a, 2003b,
2004). In her new role, Swann’s ﬁrst, unenviable,
task was to turn the company around and restore
the retailer’s fortunes.
Moreover, within the management literature
there is evidence which suggests that women are
appointed to management positions under circumstances
that diﬀer from those of male
managers. For example, women managers tend
to occupy particular types of management positions,
being more likely to hold support roles
in personnel, training, or marketing, rather than
performing critical operating or commercial
functions (Vinnicombe, 2000). Furthermore,
there is a higher proportion of women managers
in service sectors (e.g. retailing and banking) than
in more industrial sectors (e.g. manufacturing,
mining, and information technology; Davidson
and Cooper, 1992; Goodman et al., 2003; Singh
and Vinnicombe, 2003).
Lastly, there is evidence from the ﬁnance
literature that has established a link between
company performance and managerial turnover.
In particular, Kaplan (1995) has shown that when
stock performance declines companies are more
likely to make changes to their boards of directors
than when their performance is stable or improving.
There is also evidence of a positive correlation
between a company’s performance and the number
of subsequent directorships held by directors
of that company (Fama and Jensen, 1983; Ferris,
Jagannathan and Pritchard, 2003). Directors of a
company that performs well typically succeed in
being appointed to other boards, while those of
companies that perform poorly tend to be ‘scarred
for life’. Both these types of ﬁndings serve to
underline the point that company performance is
not simply the endpoint of appointment decisions,
but should also be seen as the basis and impetus
for future decisions of this form.
It is therefore important not only to focus on
women leaders themselves, but also to take into
account the circumstances surrounding their appointment.
However, contemporary analyses of
leaders and leadership have tended to neglect these
situational variables, placing an emphasis instead
largely on personality and individual diﬀerences
(Cappelli and Sherer, 1991; Meindl, 1993).
The present study
In order to get to the bottom of the phenomenon
(potentially) identiﬁed by Judge (2003) what
is needed is a more nuanced analysis of women
in leadership and company performance; one that
can take into account situational factors such as
the time of appointment and ﬂuctuations in
company performance, and can thus shed some
light on the causal relationship between the
appointment of women leaders and a company’s
ﬁnancial performance. To this end, an archival
study was conducted which spoke to the same
data set that was of interest to Judge (2003). This
investigated the share price performance of FTSE
100 companies on the London Stock Exchange
both immediately before and after the appointment
of a male or female board member. In this
way, two alternative accounts can be tested: the
one proposed by Judge (2003) – that women
leaders produce relatively poor ﬁnancial outcomes
for their companies; and an alternative – that
woman are appointed in conditions of relatively
poor company performance.
Method
Leader appointments
Using the 2003 Cranﬁeld Index (Singh and
Vinnicombe, 2003) as a guide, the websites of all
The Glass Cliﬀ 83
FTSE 100 companies were searched in order to
identify those companies that had appointed a
woman to their board of directors during 2003, and
to establish the month in which these appointments
were made. Relevant facts were established by
accessing annual reports, press releases and director
biographies. In total, 19 female board appointments
were made in 2003; 17 companies were
found to have appointed one woman in 2003, while
one company was found to have appointed two
women (at diﬀerent times) in 2003.
In order that relevant gender comparisons could
be made, a search was conducted to identify 19
FTSE 100 companies that had appointed a man to
their board of directors in 2003. As far as possible,
companies were matched for the time of appointment
and for business sector (e.g. banking, retail,
information technology).
Company performance
Two measures of company performance were
computed. The ﬁrst was a broad measure of
annual company performance, similar to that
used by Judge (2003). Using the online London
Stock Exchange Share Monitoring Service (LSE,
n.d.), the performance of each of the companies
was calculated as the percentage movement over
the 12 months preceding 17 December 2003. A
negative value represents a loss in share price
over that time, whereas a positive value represents
a gain in share price.
In order to investigate ﬂuctuations in company
performance a second indictor of company
performance was calculated. Using the online
monthly trading summaries provided by the
London Stock Exchange (n.d.) an average
monthly share price was calculated as the total
value of shares traded divided by the number of
shares traded. The average monthly share price
was calculated for the six months before and after
the appointment of a board member.
Results
Annual performance
To test for the existence of a relationship between
women in leadership and company performance,
correlational analysis was performed to assess the
strength of the relationship between the percentage
of women on the board of a company and its
annual performance in 2003. Consistent with
Judge’s (2003) claims, results revealed that for
FTSE 100 companies there was a marginally
signiﬁcant negative correlation between the percentage
of women in leadership positions and
performance as measured by change in share
price, r(97) 5 À 0.14, p 5 0.09 (one-tailed). Thus,
the higher the percentage of women on a
company’s board, the poorer the company’s
performance.
A t-test was also conducted to see if the annual
performance of a company diﬀered depending on
whether a male or a female board member had
been appointed. Analysis revealed that there was
no signiﬁcant diﬀerence in performance in 2003
for those companies that appointed a women
(M 5 7.54%) compared to those companies that
appointed a man (M 5 10.08%), t(36)o1, ns,
although the trend was in the direction suggested
by Judge (2003). Further, while neither companies
which had appointed a male nor those which
had appointed a female performed signiﬁcantly
diﬀerent from the FTSE 100 (which showed an
increase of 10.71% in the 12 months up to
December 17, 2003, both tso1), those companies
that appointed men showed a signiﬁcant increase
in share price over that time, t(18) 5 2.81,
po0.02, while those that appointed a women
did not show a signiﬁcant increase, t(18) 5 1.96,
p 5 0.07. However, as argued in the Introduction,
such analysis does not shed light on the direction
of causation, and such broad measures do not
take account of the time of appointment or
ﬂuctuations in company performance over time.
Fluctuations in monthly performance
In order to investigate ﬂuctuations in the
performance of companies immediately before
and after the appointment of an individual to
their boards of directors, changes in average
monthly share prices were calculated. The relative
monthly performance was deﬁned as the
percentage change in share price from the
previous month, with a positive value indicating
an increase in average monthly share price and a
negative value indicating a decrease in share
price. Due to the availability of data, the relative
monthly performance was calculated ﬁve months
prior to the appointment to their boards of
directors and three months after the appointment.
In total, data were available for 15
84 M. K. Ryan and S. A. Haslam
companies with female appointments and 16
companies with male appointments.
In order to investigate company performance
in the ﬁve months prior to the appointment of
a board member and three months after the
appointment a 2 (gender of appointee: male,
female) x 2 (time of appointment: ﬁrst half of
the year, second half of the year) x 8 (relative
monthly performance: 5 months prior to 3 months
post) mixed-model analysis of variance (ANOVA)
was conducted with repeated measures on the last
variable. The eight levels of the repeated measures
variable allowed for tests of linear, quadratic,
cubic, fourth-, ﬁfth-, sixth- and seventh-order
trends in relative monthly performance.
The results revealed a main eﬀect for time of
appointment, F(1, 27) 5 11.50, po0.01. These
reﬂected overall seasonal variations in the stock
market such that performance in the months
immediately before and after appointments made
in the ﬁrst half of the year (M 5 0.49%) was
lower than those made in the second half of the
year (M 5 2.63%). However, this was qualiﬁed
by a signiﬁcant two-way interaction between
relative monthly performance and time of appointment,
F(7, 189) 5 4.20, po0.001. Contrasts
revealed a signiﬁcant linear interaction between
relative monthly performance and time of appointment,
Flin(7, 27) 5 18.73, po0.001. For
appointments in the ﬁrst half of the year, relative
monthly performance tended to be most negative
three to four months prior to appointment,
increasing to reveal more positive performance
in the months immediately before and after
appointment. In other words, for people appointed
in the ﬁrst half of the year, the
appointment of new board members was generally
associated with improved performance. In
contrast, for those appointments made in the
second half of the year, relative monthly performance
was stable and generally positive.
However, this two-way interaction was qualiﬁed
by a marginally signiﬁcant linear three-way
interaction between gender, time of appointment,
and relative monthly performance, Flin(7, 27) 5
3.17, po0.09, and a signiﬁcant seventh-order
three-way interaction, F7ord(7, 27) 5 7.21,
po0.02. In order to decompose these eﬀects,
separate analyses were conducted to examine the
eﬀect of time of appointment and ﬂuctuations in
monthly performance as a function of gender of
the appointee (see Figure 1).
Analyses revealed that these three-way interactions
arose from variation in the performance
of companies that appointed women to their
board. As can be seen from Figures 1a and 1b, on
average, those companies that appointed a male
board member showed a relatively stable performance
over time, both for appointments in the
ﬁrst half and the second half of the year, with
none of the polynomial contrasts being signiﬁcant
(all ps40.05).
However, for those companies that appointed
a woman to their board, company performance
did vary signiﬁcantly over time as a function of
time of appointment, Flin(1, 13) 5 21.01, po0.01,
Fcub(1, 13) 5 4.78, po0.05, F7ord(1, 13) 5 3.91,
po0.05. As can be seen in Figure 1c, when a
woman was appointed in the ﬁrst half of the year
(i.e., when the stock market was down), company
performance showed a clear and signiﬁcant linear
increase over time, Flin(1, 7) 5 14.53, po0.01.
Between ﬁve and two months prior to the
appointment of a woman, these companies
experienced very low share price. Thereafter,
however, company performance increased signif-
icantly.
In contrast, for those companies that appointed
a woman to their board in the second
half of the year (i.e. when the stock market was
up), the pattern was more complex (see Figure
1d). Here there was a signiﬁcant linear decrease in
performance, Flin(1, 6) 5 7.51, po0.04, such that
performance before the appointment of a woman
was generally positive while after the appointment
it was relatively stable. However, in
addition, this analysis revealed a signiﬁcant cubic
trend, Fcub(1, 6) 5 5.70, p 5 0.05. This arose from
the fact that performance prior to appointment
was not consistently high but ﬂuctuated between
being high and being stable.
Discussion
The glass cliﬀ
This archival examination of the performance
of FTSE 100 companies questions the rather
simplistic assumption that women leaders are
responsible for poor company performance.
Instead a more complex story is revealed, one
that points to the need to take account of
situational factors when examining organizational
and leadership outcomes (e.g. see Miendl,
The Glass Cliﬀ 85
1993; Haslam, 2001). First, it is important to note
that, contrary to Judge’s (2003) intimation, the
appointment of a woman to the board of
directors was not associated with a subsequent
drop in company performance. Indeed, in a time
of a general ﬁnancial downturn in the stock
market, companies that appointed a woman
actually experienced a marked increase in share
price after the appointment (Figure 1c), whereas
those appointments made in less unsettling times
were followed by a period of share price stability
(Figure 1d).
However, potentially more interesting ﬁndings
uncovered by the study related to ﬂuctuations in
company performance leading up to the appointment
of men and women to boards of directors.
In particular, it is apparent that for companies
which appointed men to their boards of directors
in 2003, company performance was relatively
stable, both before and after the after the
appointment. Furthermore, this was true regardless
of the time of year that the appointment was
made, and hence regardless of the state of the
stock market (see Figures 1a and 1b). For
companies that appointed women to their boards
of directors in 2003 a more interesting pattern of
results emerged. In a time of a general ﬁnancial
downturn in the stock market, companies that
appointed a woman had experienced consistently
poor performance in the months preceding the
appointment (Figure 1c). In contrast, when the
stock market was more stable, companies that
appointed a woman had experienced positive (but
ﬂuctuating) performance (Figure 1d).
Male Appointment
Stock Market Up
3mthspost
2mthspost
1mthpost
1mthprior
2mthsprior
3mthsprior
4mthsprior
5mthsprior
3mthspost
2mthspost
1mthpost
1mthprior
2mthsprior
3mthsprior
4mthsprior
5mthsprior
3mthspost
2mthspost
1mthpost
1mthprior
2mthsprior
3mthsprior
4mthsprior
5mthsprior
3mthspost
2mthspost
1mthpost
1mthprior
2mthsprior
3mthsprior
4mthsprior
5mthsprior
RelativeMonthlyPerformance(%)
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-2
-4
-6
-8
Male Appointment(a) (b)
(c) (d)
Stock Market Down
RelativeMonthlyPerformance(%)
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-2
-4
-6
-8
Female Appointment
Stock Market Down
RelativeMonthlyPerformance(%)
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-2
-4
-6
-8
Female Appointment
Stock Market Up
RelativeMonthlyPerformance(%)
12
10
8
6
4
2
0
-2
-4
-6
-8
Figure 1. Relative monthly performance in the ﬁve months prior to and three months post appointment of a board member as a function
of gender of appointee and the time of year of the appointment.
86 M. K. Ryan and S. A. Haslam
Importantly, then, this archival study has helped
to unearth an interesting phenomenon. That is, it
appears that women are particularly likely to be
placed in positions of leadership in circumstances
of general ﬁnancial downturn and downturn in
company performance. In this way, such women
can be seen to be placed on top of a ‘glass cliﬀ’, in
the sense that their leadership appointments are
made in problematic organizational circumstances
and hence are more precarious.
Implications for the evaluation of women leaders
Positions on glass cliﬀs can be seen as being
exceedingly dangerous for the women who hold
them. Companies that have experienced consistently
bad performance are bound to attract
attention to themselves and to those on their
boards of directors (as the Swann’s experience at
W.H. Smith shows). Moreover, consistent with
the traditional, ‘romantic’ model of leadership –
and as Judge’s, 2003, attributions show all too
vividly – in such circumstances explanations of
organizational outcomes (e.g. negative share
performance), are likely to be couched in terms
of the personalities and individual abilities of the
leaders involved (e.g. their leadership style or
ﬁnancial competence) rather than on the situational
and contextual variables surrounding the
company (Cappelli and Sherer, 1991; Meindl,
1993; Meindl, Ehrlich and Dukerich, 1985; see
also Haslam, 2001; Haslam et al., 2001). In this
way, compared to men, women who assume
leadership oﬃces may be diﬀerentially exposed to
criticism and in greater danger of being apportioned
blame for negative outcomes that were set
in train well before they assumed their new roles.
This is particularly problematic in light of
evidence that directors who leave the boards of
companies which have performed poorly are
likely to suﬀer from a ‘tarnished reputation’
(Ferris et al., 2003) and are less likely be oﬀered
future directorships (Brickley, Linck and Coles,
1999; Gilson, 1990).
However, it must be noted that, in reality, a
company’s ﬁnancial performance, especially one
that is ﬂoated on the share market, is determined
just as much (if not more) by shareholder
perceptions as it is by the actual behaviour of
its board members (cf. Lord and Maher, 1991).
Thus, the ﬁnancial direction that a company
takes after the appointment of any board
members, especially over a short time-span, is
likely to be more indicative of the conﬁdence that
the shareholders have in the appointment than of
the actual ability of the appointed board member.
Obviously, companies are aware of the importance
of shareholder conﬁdence, and therefore
the appointment of a woman leader when things
are going badly could be seen as a corporate
strategy designed to signal to the shareholders
that radical change is on the way (Furtado and
Rozeﬀ, 1987).
Directions for future research
Although this archival examination of the performance
of FTSE 100 companies points to the
existence of a glass cliﬀ, it clearly represents only
a preliminary investigation of this phenomenon.
Further research is therefore required in order to
provide more thoroughgoing examination of the
psychological processes underlying these ﬁndings.
One obvious question that needs to be addressed
is the nature of the corporate (and general)
motivations underlying the appointment of women
to precarious positions. Here a variety of
motivations could be posited, ranging from
conﬁdence in the particular abilities of women
leaders (e.g. Eagly, Johannesen-Schmidt and
van Engen, 2003) to overt sexism. It is also
important to investigate women leaders’ sensitivity
to, and perceptions of, glass cliﬀ positions
(Schmitt, Ellemers and Branscombe, 2003).
Do they see the precariousness as a form of
discrimination, or simply as an opportunity to
achieve?
As suggested above, another important avenue
for research is to examine the way in which
women who take on these glass cliﬀ positions are
subsequently evaluated by their colleagues, staﬀ
and by the public at large. Because women
typically constitute a minority on the board of
any company (Singh and Vinnicombe, 2003) are
they more visible and thus more open to criticism
(Miller, Taylor and Buck, 1991)? Are women
more likely to be blamed for negative organizational
outcomes? Are they equally likely to be
praised for any positive outcomes?
Lastly, it is also necessary to establish whether
the glass cliﬀ phenomenon extends outside the
boardroom and into other leadership arenas.
Theoretically, it is also important to see whether
the phenomenon is associated with low-status
The Glass Cliﬀ 87
group membership in general and hence is a
manifestation of a general social psychological
process rather than one speciﬁc to gender (e.g. as
discussed by Haslam, Postmes and Ellemers,
2003; Ryan and David, 2003; Ryan, David, and
Reynolds, 2004). Along these lines, there is some
evidence to suggest that, at least in Japan, poor
company performance is associated with the
appointment of ‘outsiders’ to boards of directors
(Kaplan and Minton, 1994).
In order to explore these possibilities, several
experimental and archival investigations are
underway and all have revealed patterns commensurate
with the above ﬁndings (Ryan and
Haslam, in prep-a, in prep-b). In particular, there
is evidence to suggest that within politics, women
who rise to public oﬃce often do so under
diﬃcult circumstances. Looking, for example, at
Margaret Thatcher’s political career, a series of
glass cliﬀ situations can be identiﬁed. Thatcher’s
ﬁrst brush with politics was to run as a
Conservative candidate (twice) in a strong, safe
Labour seat, losing both attempts. She was made
Education Minister in the early 1970s when
student radicalism was at its peak, facing student
riots and strong criticism. Lastly, in 1979 she
became Prime Minister at a time when Britain
was facing rampant unemployment and economic
recession. In Australia too, there have only
ever been two women state premiers (Joan Kirner
in Victoria and Carmen Lawrence in Western
Australia). Both were appointed mid-term and
after their party had been exposed to humiliating
scandals. As a result, both faced the prospect of
unwinnable elections which they duly lost.
Conclusion
It is already well established that women face
greater challenges than men in their attempts to
climb to the top of the corporate ladder. Moreover,
it is apparent that even if they arrive there,
women are likely to receive greater scrutiny and
criticism than men, and to secure less positive
evaluations, even when performing exactly the
same leadership roles (Eagly et al., 1992). It now
seems apparent that in addition to these
obstacles, the leadership positions that women
occupy are likely to be less promising than those
of their male counterparts. So, in addition to
confronting a glass ceiling and not having access
to a glass elevator, they are also likely to be
placed on a glass cliﬀ. Furthermore, as the
content of Judge’s (2003) article indicates, if,
upon ﬁnding themselves in a leadership position,
they fail (as they are more likely to than men
because their positions are more precarious), they
may be singled out for blame and humiliation, at
the same time that the unpropitious conditions of
their appointment are overlooked.
The debate surrounding this process is likely to
become more ferocious as women assume more
leadership roles in the future (Singh and Vinnicombe,
2003). One important contribution of this
paper is to help restore some balance to this
debate. It does this by helping to render visible
factors that are customarily ignored in the
analysis of organizational leadership (Haslam,
2001; Miendl, 1993). Ironically too, it is apparent
that, if overlooked, these factors can easily
promote the very inequality that women’s advancement
is intended to redress.
Acknowledgement
Thanks to Tom Postmes for statistical guidance.
This research was funded by a grant from the
Leverhulme Trust (Grant F.00144.V).
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Michelle Ryan is Post-Doctoral Researcher in the School of Psychology at the University of Exeter,
and currently holds a ﬁve-year Academic Fellowship funded by the Research Council of the United
Kingdom. Her main area of interest is examining gender and gender diﬀerences from a social
psychological perspective, particularly diﬀerences within an organizational setting. Together with
Alex Haslam, Michelle was recently awarded funding from the European Social Fund to further
research the Glass Cliﬀ.
Alex Haslam is Professor of Psychology at the University of Exeter. Work with colleagues at
Exeter and elsewhere is informed by a social identity perspective and deals with core organizational
topics such as leadership, motivation, communication, stress and power. His most recent book is
Psychology in Organizations: The Social Identity Approach (2nd Ed. Sage, 2004). He is currently
Chief Editor of the European Journal of Social Psychology.
90 M. K. Ryan and S. A. Haslam