The Glass Cliff – Turning to Women During a Crisis

By Kelly Tanner (New York City)

A recent study published in the British Journal of Social Psychology concluded that female leaders are preferred during a crisis. This study, “The glass cliff: When and why women are selected as leaders in crisis contexts,” notes that when a company is in crisis, the perception of what constitutes an ideal leader shifts to someone with stereotypically non-male characteristics.

According to the study, since the feelings regarding what men bring to the table have shifted, the woman candidate is viewed as more effective, essentially by default, since men are seen as unqualified. On the other hand, the phenomenon is dubbed “the glass cliff,” because the troubles the company may be facing are seen as so insurmountable that the woman who has been selected to lead the company will probably not succeed, and thus, be sacrificed – pushed off the cliff.

What is interesting in this phenomenon is that the perception of female leaders does not change markedly – women are seen as stereotypically nurturing caretaker types in the study using a fictional successful business scenario and also a crisis situation. In essence, female leaders are best perceived to clean up the mess in a bad situation, after other options have been exhausted.

This preference for a female leader increases when the last several leaders have all been male, indicating a desire to break from a pattern. In the BJSP study, researchers Susanne Bruckmüller and Nyla Branscombe explain:

“Our findings indicate that women find themselves in precarious leadership positions not because they are singled out for them, but because men no longer seem to fit… There is, of course, a double irony here. When women get to enjoy the spoils of leadership (a) it is not because they are seen to deserve them, but because men no longer do, and (b) this only occurs when, and because, there are fewer spoils to enjoy.”

Even if the female leader does manage to clean up the mess, the researchers imply, she will not be seen as deserving of accolades as her male counterparts. The woman was a last resort – not the first choice.

Woman as “Other”

The ideas raised by this study, including the greater flexibility in which we view men’s leadership ability, can be partially explained by the concept of male neutrality. Men are usually seen as ‘normal,’ the default or neutral category, while women are seen as ‘other,’ an alternative and notable departure from the norm.

As an example, consider how magazines for sale are usually displayed under categorizations such as “sports,” “news,” “health,” and “women’s interest,” as if to imply that women do not read about sports, news or health. The fact that female leaders are still perceived to be an alternative to the norm, notable for their gender and a departure from the default leader type also makes it easier to bestow upon them, as a group, additional qualities such as “caretaker,” “nurturing,” and “good communicator,” whereas male leaders are perceived differently in different scenarios as situations change, since they constitute “everybody else.”

A Glass Catch-22

When will we see an end to the glass cliff? As one study revealed, when women leaders become commonplace, the glass cliff phenomenon disappears.

In a case study for a fictional company where the most recent three leaders were all female, no bias for or against female leaders was seen. Participants were equally likely to select the female or the male candidate for leadership when asked, since women were no longer the ‘alternative’ choice.

But this presents a catch-22, in which women would likely change the perception of female leadership …if enough of them were in positions of authority frequently enough that it was no longer a marked phenomenon. But how can women reach leadership positions when they are usually perceived as the alternative candidate to be resorted to only in times of crisis?

Perhaps women must seize the moment during the downturn as a window of opportunity to get our foot in the door of leadership positions, even if those roles turn out to be fraught with challenges no one else is seemingly qualified to handle – or willing to step up to the challenge.