{"id":5126,"date":"2014-10-15T10:53:49","date_gmt":"2014-10-15T15:53:49","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/citings\/?p=5126"},"modified":"2015-10-13T13:28:22","modified_gmt":"2015-10-13T18:28:22","slug":"off-the-glass-cliff","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/2014\/10\/15\/off-the-glass-cliff\/","title":{"rendered":"Pushing Secret Service Director Off the Glass Cliff?"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"Photo<\/a>
Photo by Charlotte Morrall via Flickr CC. Click for original.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

When Julia Pierson\u2019s name first appeared in national headlines last year, it must have sounded like a perfect solution. President Obama appointed Pierson as the nation\u2019s first female Director of the Secret Service following the aftermath of an embarrassing scandal in which several agents hired prostitutes on a presidential trip to Columbia. Many saw Pierson as uniquely positioned to purge the organization of its hyper-masculine culture and revive its good name.<\/p>\n

After an intruder succeeded in running across the lawn and into the East Room of the White House, however, a firestorm of criticism prompted Pierson\u2019s resignation. Writing in the New Republic,<\/em> Bryce Covert suggests<\/a> that the very gendered conditions of Pierson\u2019s hire preconfigured her administration\u2019s failure from the start. Such is the unfortunate case, he argues, for a large number of women in leadership roles:<\/p>\n

As with Pierson, women are often put in these positions because rough patches make people think they need to shake things up and try something new—like putting a woman in charge. When it\u2019s smooth sailing, on the other hand, men get to maintain control of the steering wheel. Women are also thought to have qualities associated with cleaning up messes.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

You\u2019re familiar with that unseen barrier to power called the \u201cglass ceiling\u201d? Covert cites research by psychologists Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam<\/a>\u00a0to show that female leaders often reach top jobs that come with an inordinately high risk of failure. Social scientists call this precarious position the \u201cglass cliff\u201d.<\/p>\n

Covert builds his case on a wealth of research exploring the risks that await women at the top of the corporate world:<\/p>\n

Multiple studies have found that women are most likely to be given a chance at top roles in the corporate world when things are already bad. One found that before a woman took over as CEO of a Fortune 500 company between 1996 and 2010, its previous performance was significantly negative<\/a>. Another found that FTSE 100 companies who appointed women to their boards were more likely<\/a> to have had five months of consistently bad performance compared to those who picked men. Another found that companies were most likely<\/a> to choose women for their boards after a loss that signaled the company was underperforming. Even in a lab, students and business leaders are more likely<\/a> to pick a woman to lead a hypothetical organization when performance is on the decline.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Looking for more on the barriers facing women in positions of power? Our own Anne Kaduk shows \u201cThere\u2019s Research on That!<\/a>\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

When Julia Pierson\u2019s name first appeared in national headlines last year, it must have sounded like a perfect solution. President Obama appointed Pierson as the nation\u2019s first female Director of the Secret Service following the aftermath of an embarrassing scandal in which several agents hired prostitutes on a presidential trip to Columbia. Many saw Pierson […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":495,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[55],"tags":[641,39114,2778,1006,18918,2991],"class_list":["post-5126","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-gender","tag-diversity","tag-gender","tag-gender-roles","tag-glass-ceiling","tag-glass-cliff","tag-leadership"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/495"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5126"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5130,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5126\/revisions\/5130"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/clippings\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}