The Glass Cliff

According to Sylvia Ann Hewlett, an economist and founding president of the Center for Work-Life Policy, women who manage to break through the glass ceiling may face another obstacle — the “glass cliff” (see a reprint at BusinessWeek of a post from her blog at Harvard Business Online).

Hewlett revisits a 2005 article in the British Journal of Management, which found that female leaders were more likely than their male counterparts to be brought on board in times of crisis and put in a position to stumble. Carly Fiorina of Hewlett Packard, Kate Swan of W.H. Smith, and Patricia Russo of Alcatel-Lucent are cases in point — they “were all appointed to top positions at a time of ‘tumbling share prices,’” Hewlett writes. Furthermore, life for women at the top can be lonely, as few of them have mentors or a strong network to rely on for guidance, Hewlett adds. According to The Athena Factor: Reversing the Brain Drain in Science, Engineering, and Technology, a report co-written by Hewlett and published in the Harvard Business Review in June, “a significant proportion of women in science, engineering and technology (SET) believe that when they fail they don’t get second chances,” she writes.

Are female leaders in academe standing on the edge of a “glass cliff,” too?