Females and Precarious Board Positions: Further Evidence of the Glass Cliff
| Date | 01 July 2014 |
| Author | Carol Linehan,Mark Mulcahy |
| DOI | http://doi.org/10.1111/1467-8551.12046 |
| Published date | 01 July 2014 |
Females and Precarious Board Positions:
Further Evidence of the Glass Cliff
Mark Mulcahy and Carol Linehan1
Accounting and Finance and 1Management and Marketing, University College Cork, Cork, Ireland
Corresponding author email: mark.mulcahy@ucc.ie
The ‘glass cliff’ posits that when women achieve high profile roles, these are at firms in
precarious positions. Previous research analysed appointments (male/female), estimated
the precariousness of firms involved and drew inferences about the glass cliff. This study
is different as it directly tests the relationship between a precarious situation and changes
in board gender diversity. The sample is companies listed on the UK stock exchange
reporting an initial loss in the years 2004–2006. A matched control sample is used in a
difference-in-differences analysis to avoid inadvertently attributing improvements
arising from societal/regulatory changes in gender diversity to the loss event. Findings
suggest that when the loss is ‘big’ there is a difference in the increase in gender diversity
versus both the control and the ‘small’ loss subsamples, i.e. compelling evidence of the
glass cliff. In the context of ongoing political and social debates about women on boards
our work (i) identifies continuing structural barriers for women ascending to board level
in that women are more likely to be over-represented on boards of companies that are
more precarious and (ii) sounds a note of caution about celebrating increased gender
diversity on boards without considering the precariousness of the company involved.
Introduction
Women who aspire to positions of leadership are
often confronted with barriers that block their
progress (Kanter, 1977). Some inroads have been
made over the past two decades such that cracks
are appearing in the glass ceiling (Davidson and
Cooper, 1992; Dreher, 2003; Goodman, Fields
and Blum, 2003; Stroh, Langlands and Simpson,
2004). Indeed, at the level of the corporate board
several countries including Norway, Spain and
France (among others) have mandated quotas for
female board members, although the Davies
Report (2011) did not recommend minimum
quotas in the UK but rather a target of 25% by
2015 for the FTSE 100. While the issue of gender
diversity has certainly received attention, the
promise of greater diversity on corporate boards
does not seem to have been delivered upon and
there is clear evidence that gender discrimination
exists and persists (Adams et al., 2007; Adler,
2000; Sealy and Vinnicombe, 2013; Sealy, Singh
and Vinnicombe, 2007).
Continued stark gender imbalance on corpo-
rate boards is perhaps even more surprising given
that the past 20 years have seen growing media
and political interest in gender diversity on
boards. Regulatory pressure has increased
recently in this domain following EU Commis-
sioner Reding’s proposed legislation on gender
quotas (objective of 40% of the under-represented
sex in non-executive board member positions by
2020). Recent research (Ryan and Haslam, 2005,
2007) has shifted the emphasis from the glass
ceiling and the subtle processes that keep women
from positions of organizational leadership to
those circumstances where women do achieve
positions of organizational leadership (Agars,
2004; King, 2006; Schmitt, Ellemers and
Branscombe, 2003). The authors found evidence
that women are more likely to achieve board posi-
tions when those positions are associated with a
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British Journal of Management, Vol. 25, 425–438 (2014)
DOI: 10.1111/1467-8551.12046
© 2013 British Academy of Management. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd, 9600 Garsington Road, Oxford OX4
2DQ, UK and 350 Main Street, Malden, MA, 02148, USA.
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