Although the incidents happened in the academia world a pond over in the US, it hit me like a ton of bricks.

Both cases resonated so deeply with me because sadly, the narratives are not isolated incidents but are more common than expected.

I am a corporate girlie (among many other accomplishments) who is looking to pursue executive leadership in the corporate world, but a running theme that I continually discuss with my therapist is, “at what cost?”. So, I continue to progress in my career journey with trepidation.

WGEA reported that in Australia, women constitute 42 per cent of all employees, yet make up just a quarter of executives and only 10 per cent of CEOs for large, for-profit companies. For my case, I will need to add the intersectionality of being a migrant and being a Black woman which further widens the gap.

Not only do I have to navigate through a glass ceiling, but when I am in executive leadership, KPMG’s report She’s Price(d)less quantified the Australian gender pay gap to be worth ~$1bn, with the gap widening from 6 per cent among the lowest earning workers to 18 per cent among the executives.

In Australia, we have seen a fair share of women in executive leadership face the guillotine; from the misogyny faced by Julia Gillard to Christine Holgate’s public execution, as well as the most recent target Kelly Bayer Rosmarin. Is that what comes with the territory?! Should it though?! There are many other cases but so far the narrative around executive leadership is not sounding appealing to me AT ALL!

I hold onto hope that possibly Macquarie Group’s CEO Shemara Wikramanayake may have a positive story but I fear finding out more about her leadership experience as it may taint my perspective.

There have been countless DEI initiatives that have been implemented across the board, some successfully, others not so much. However, the fundamental flaw I see is the attempt to retrofit into an industrial system never designed with women in mind. There needs to be a radical rethink of how we look at the way we work and job design. Factors such as the impact of the burden of care, equitable access to opportunities and equitable compensation of labour all need to be considered to fashion an inclusive workplace that supports women.

The challenge is, not many want to invest in dismantling the system, especially when one benefits from it, so you get a lot of resistance to changing the status quo. Reality is the status quo is not working for half of the population and that is a costly problem for the economy. 

We have recent experience of pivoting quickly and on a large scale with our COVID experience, so don’t tell me it’s impossible. Radical change will also need to involve changes in societal attitudes towards women and the contribution women make to the functioning of society. Are we faring any better in that realm? With violence against women still a prevalent problem in Australian society, we still have a fair way to go in turning around sentiments. The discourse needs to be ongoing because the health of a functioning economy is subject to the status of the well-being and welfare of its participants.

As I contemplate my next career move, I am continuously seeking out positive representation and narratives that will fuel my hopes to enter executive leadership.

I have hope for the future and we are progressing as a society albeit at a slower rate than desired. However, I am embarking on the journey with my eyes wide open and prioritising my mental health with every step because what I am not going to do is sacrifice my well-being for the sake of a title.

So if you know of stories of women in executive leadership who are thriving, please share. Help a girl out!

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And as we have seen over and over again in 2023, a woman is appointed to replace him and take on the first task of cleaning up his mess.

This week’s example comes with the very well qualified and experienced Stephanie Foster, who has been appointed Home Affairs Secretary, replacing Mike Pezzullo, who was stood aside for an investigation into misconduct in September and officially sacked this week.

Just like a number of other women appointed to high-profile positions this year, Foster is now set to endure the public scrutiny of dealing with a predecessor’s mess.

Foster has been serving as acting secretary since Pezzullo was placed on leave without pay while Australian Public Service Commissioner Lynelle Briggs, undertook her investigation. On Monday, he was officially sacked, with Briggs finding Pezzullo had breached the Australian Public Service Code of Conduct 14 times during his communications attempting to influence political processes, sent via a series of text messages to a Liberal party insider and published in a Sydney Morning Investigation in September.

On Tuesday, Prime Minister Anthony Albanese announced the Governor-General had accepted his recommendation to appoint Foster as Secretary. She was appointed associate secretary at Immigration last year and previously ran the Prime Minister and Cabinet’s executive government. She has been lauded as a fixer and an “agency cleaner”. Notably, she led an investigation and review into parliamentary workplace scandals and incidents, including a 2021 review into parliamentary workplace culture and practices following Brittney Higgins’ allegations that she was raped in parliament. She established the Parliament Workplace Support Service and implemented recommendations of the ‘Set the Standard’ report from the Independent Review into Commonwealth Parliamentary Workplaces.

Foster starts a five-year appointment immediately. But first comes the cleanup. Not only will she be contending with the fallout of a former boss found to have used his influence and power for personal gain, but she will also be contending with the associated cultural mess, rebuilding relationships and taking on the added bonus of a major political football by way of the High Court decision on immigration detention.

Foster is the first woman to be named Secretary of Home Affairs, but she is also only the second person, with Pezzullo taking the helm when a reshaping of departments in December 2017 saw him appointed to the mega department.

And she joins good and other well-qualified company when it comes to appointments made in the wake of public scandals or scrutiny of a male predecessor and his team.

There is Michele Bullock, who started as the first female Director of the RBA in September, with her predecessor Philip Lowe, facing public and political backlash following a series of rate rises in line with the cost of living crisis.

There is Vanessa Hudson appointed to lead Qantas, the first woman in the position, replacing Alan Joyce as he moved his retirement months forward just as the airline was facing significant public criticism. Joyce was, therefore, unavailable to front the senate grilling regarding flight cancellations – that job was left for Hudson.

As Senator Bridget McKenzie said shortly after Hudson was appointed, she hoped she had a “big mop” to take care of the “mess”.

“Incredible, the number of times very good women are asked to come in and clean up a very large mess left by, shall we say, a guy,” McKenzie said.

There was also Kristin Stubbins, appointed acting CEO of PwC, the first female Australian CEO of the firm. Despite having nothing to do with the male-led and dominated tax team that included her CEO predecessors, it was Stubbins who had to front up to apologise to the community. She also had to apologise to the Australian Government, to clients and to the (then) 10,000 or so employees of PwC. What a first week in the role. Stubbins is now leaving the firm in January, following a three decade career. She will depart as PwC’s most senior auditor.

At Optus, it was a different situation. Kelly Bayer Rosmarin announced her resignation following the telco’s handling of the massive October network failure, as well as a major security breach. But we couldn’t help but notice that she announced her resignation after fronting up to the Senate hearing to answer questions about what went wrong. Also, rather than dig in and try and save her position, she actually resigned “in the best interest of Optus.”

Like Hudson and Stubbins and Bullock and so many others, Stephanie Foster too will require a big mop, and she too appears to have the experience to get in and start cleaning things up. Makes you wonder why it took so long for women to get appointed to these roles in the first place, and why still only 22 per cent of CEOs across Australia are female.

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They are Vanessa Hudson, who will become CEO of Qantas Group tomorrow (Wednesday the 6^th), and Michele Bullock, who will become the first Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia on September 18.

And they both have serious work ahead in pulling their organisations back from the precipice.

Hudson’s tenure comes two months earlier than planned, with Qantas CEO Alan Joyce’s retirement brought forward in a surprise move announced by Qantas Tuesday morning. Qantas announced the immediate succession will support the company in accelerating its “renewal”.

While Bullock waits another couple of weeks to take the helm of the RBA, the man she is succeeding is also experiencing a finale of sorts today.  RBA Governor Philip Lowe will be chairing his last meeting of the RBA board, overseeing for the last time a decision on the future of the official interest rate (the markets are predicting there will be no change).

Both Joyce and Lowe represent two leaders of two very different organisations who have become key villains in separate stories that the public are hooked on reading.

But they also share some similarities. Lowe was the ninth man in a row to serve as RBA governor, following another succession of six men who served as Commonwealth Bank of Australia Governors until 1960. Joyce also followed a long lineup of men in the role.

Both have spent significant time in their roles. For Lowe, it’s seven years – and he would have liked another term. For Joyce, an astonishing 15 years as CEO.

Joyce leaves Qantas with the airline having lost serious trust among the Australian public. Last week he faced an intense Senate inquiry grilling, with the ACCC later launching Federal Court action against Qantas, alleging the airline had sold tickets for flights already cancelled.

Days prior to the inquiry, Joyce announced a massive $2.47 billion full-year underlying profit, thanks to high ticket prices and strong travel demand. And yet Australians are still contending with constant disrupted travel plans and remain out-of-pocket due to cancelled flights, while thousands of workers have lost jobs. The ACCC alleges were more than 8000 flights where sold to customers between May and July last year, even after Qantas had already cancelled the flights, a period when Qantas cancelled close to one in four flights and also removed around 15,000 flights from its 66,000 domestic and international flights.

Joyce described bringing his retirement forward as “the best thing I can do”.

“In the last few weeks, the focus on Qantas and events of the past make it clear to me that the company needs to move ahead with its renewal as a priority,” Joyce said in the statement

“The best thing I can do under these circumstances is to bring forward my retirement and hand over to Vanessa and the new management team now, knowing they will do an excellent job.”

As Qantas chair Richard Goyder said on the early CEO succession announcement, “the transition comes at what is obviously a challenging time for Qantas and its people.”

He noted that the airline has an important job to do in restoring the public’s confidence in the “kind of company we are, and that’s what the Board is focused on, and what the management under Vanessa’s leadership will do.”

Hudson has some work ahead. She needs to regain the trust of the Australian public, deal with the ACCC, fallout from the Senate Inquiry and rebuild relationships with workers and the unions, among other things. She gets to do it on a base salary that will be 25 per cent less than what Joyce took home — and that’s not including the massive $10 million in bonus shares Joyce was awarded last week.

Meanwhile, Treasurer Jim Chalmers said on appointing Michele Bullock to lead the RBA back in July, she will bring a ‘fresh perspective”. He also commended the “style and the nature of her leadership.”

Bullock also has work ahead. She needs to rebuild Australian trust in the RBA, contend with inflation, lead an overhaul of how the bank operates, and navigate all the future uncertainty that a central bank must deal with, including climate change, which she described last week as bringing acute uncertainty, with effects that “could be severe and irreversible if tipping points are reached.”

So often, the need for “fresh perspectives” and “renewal” are sought just as an organisation is on the precipice. What better opportunity is there to try something at least a little different? But in this case, as in many similar situations previously, women don’t just take on an organisation, they take on the crisis and all the scrutiny and expectation that comes with them being tasked with pulling things back from the brink.

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Professor Ryan is one of the world’s leading thinkers on leadership and is a professor of social and organisational psychology. She coined the concept “glass cliff”, a term that describes how women are often put in leadership roles during times of crisis or hardship, when the chances of failure are highest.

Founded and chaired by former Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard, the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership at ANU is the sister of an original institute for women’s leadership at King’s College, London.

Professor Ryan will join the institute at ANU to help drive gender equality in women’s career across the Asia-Pacific and expand the institute’s reach in the region.

Julia Gillard said Professor Ryan’s appointment comes as progress on gender equality has slowed during the pandemic, and in some places, is reversing.

“Evidence shows the impact of the COVID pandemic over the past 12 months has compounded many of the pre-existing barriers women face in building careers and entering leadership roles,” Gillard said.

“Michelle brings incredible experience and energy to the role and I’m looking forward to working with her to address these urgent challenges and expand the reach of the Global Institute for Women’s Leadership across the Asia-Pacific region.”

Professor Ryan completed her undergraduate and PhD qualifications at ANU, and has spent the past 17 years living in the UK, where she currently works as a Professor of Social and Organisational Psychology at the University of Exeter.

Professor Ryan said she was excited to be returning to ANU after nearly two decades working in Europe.

“The last decades have shown we have made significant gains in women’s leadership. However, sadly there is much more to do,” she said.

“Women leaders all over the globe have proven to be effective, inspirational and incredibly capable. The impediments women face are still too great in number and size. We need to keep working hard to change that and improve outcomes.

“I’m looking forward to working to bring together world-leading academics with policymakers, activists, and businesses keen to close the gender gap in leadership.”

Professor Ryan will begin the new role from July 1.

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She’s hanging on.

And, once again, we’re stunned at the way she continues to stand firm and refuses to backdown from her position in the face of what seems to be an impossible and, for a large majority of the population, unwanted task: delivering on Brexit

Presenting another trademark, short and sharp press conference outside number 10 Downing Street this morning Australia time, she described the past 24 hours as “unsettling” but still declared that, “I believe it is my duty to deliver on their (the British people’s) instruction to leave the European Union and I intend to do so.”

May doesn’t appear to be going anywhere, at least not by choice. Is it resilience? Self-belief? Sheer determination to complete what she started?

Political commentators have labelled it everything from absolute tenacity, to possessing a “type of fortitude that borders on the superhuman” with a “capacity for thankless slog”. They’ve said it’s her “bloody-mindedness” and, even (yes, really), the fact she “doesn’t have children” or a social life and isn’t going to go on from this to make a lot of money in different fields.

We’re relatively certain May could get another job, and make plenty of money in the process, despite her previous mistakes (like calling a general election in 2017 to secure a mandate, only to end up weaker than ever). But in the meantime, May is determined to do everything possible to secure Brexit — despite few seeing a path forward on how that can happen.

The problem is that time is running out on striking a deal that a huge portion of the country do not want to see happen — and that another significant portion think does not go far enough in its current iteration. The Brexit deadline is March 29 2019.

Could anyone win or get anywhere from this position? Many would have simply walked away, a long time ago.

And even for those who would stay, could they remain as calm? Retain the same level of mental and physical stamina to keep going at it?

May told reporters today that all MPs must work together and “put self-interest aside”. From tomorrow, she said (speaking very late on Wednesday evening, London time), meetings will be occurring between senior government representatives, and the door remains open for the Labour Party to participate.

“It will not be an easy task,” she said. But Theresa May will continue at it.

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Having kept her cool and calm for a number of months now — even in the face of some brutal words from her party rivals — she was also direct to the point in responding to the vote, giving a brief statement outside Number 10 Downing Street.

“A significant number of colleagues did vote against me and I have listened to what they said,” she told reporters.

But she said she will get on with the job of Brexit, and will take concerns that members of parliament have about the current proposal back to European leaders — including regarding the ‘backstop’ of Northern Ireland.

Since taking the top job — and the unenviable task of managing and negotiating a Brexit deal — she’s been associated with the ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon. But she has not fallen off it yet (nor did she a few weeks back during another dangerous period for her leadership.)

She now gets a reprieve from a further confidence vote, given party rules state there can be no further formal move against her leadership for 12 months.

However, May has said she won’t contest the 2022 elections, according to reports from the 40 minutes she spent addressing the backbench committee prior to the vote.

The no confidence vote was triggered by the right-wing faction of her party, with a number of conservatives declaring their support for or against on social media.

Being very busy doesn’t necessarily mean an individual is being productive. I admire Theresa May’s stamina but as Conservative Leader and Prime Minister she’s seen Brexit as a problem to be mitigated not a global opportunity. Therefore, regrettably, I have lost confidence in her.

— Henry Smith MP (@HenrySmithUK) December 12, 2018

Some even shared their vote cards on Twitter, with their choices marked.

Proud to have voted in support of the PM, thank you to the many people who have contacted my office today to urge me to do just that pic.twitter.com/pF5ChA4xHh

— Margot James (@margot_james_mp) December 12, 2018

Earlier on in the day, opposition leader Jeremy Corbyn noted the “chaos at the heart of this government” declaring that many people in the country were finding “planning ahead impossible.”

May fired back angrily during Question Time, saying that all Corbyn wants to do is create chaos, division and damage. The comments were met with cheers from her own backbenchers, which must have been a little confidence-boosting, given the impending leadership vote just hours away.

Earlier this week May canceled a Parliamentary vote on her draft Brexit agreement. It was headed for defeat.

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The UK Prime Minister has, since she was elevated to the top job following the Brexit vote, became the prime example of the ‘Glass Cliff’ theory: the idea that woman ascend to leadership positions when the risk of failure is high.

And never has the full risk of failure looked more apparent then in the past few days. Some commentators put May’s chances of getting Parliamentary sign-off on her 545-page Brexit plan as being hopelessly slim.

Even keeping the top job is proving very difficult at this point.

Following a five-hour Cabinet meeting on her Brexit plan midway through last week that May described to reporters as being “impassioned”, she saw some of her top MPs resigning and an internal rebellion of conservatives building as they sought to secure 48 no-confidence letters in order to trigger a leadership spill.

Still, May has come this far. She’s more than two years into the job. She survived the initial period of uncertainty and confusion following the Brexit vote, as well as a poor election campaign and subsequent catastrophic election results in 2017 that significantly reduced her mandate to lead.

Very few politicians or anybody would envy the job May has been trying to get done, especially any who voted to ‘remain’ during the 2016 referendum, as May did. And very few again would have put themselves in such a position to even try.

One of the key authors of the Glass Cliff term, Professor Michelle Ryan, recently reported on her 15-year research into the theory at the Royal Society’s annual Diversity Conference.

“I don’t think it is a coincidence that Theresa May is leading us through this crisis, and it is noteworthy how many men stepped away from the leadership role – including David Cameron and Boris Johnson,” she said.

“Such glass cliff positions in times of crisis run the risk of reinforcing stereotypes that women aren’t suited for leadership.”

Ryan kickstarted her research on the phenomenon following a 2003 Times article stating that “the triumphant march of women into the country’s boardrooms has … wreaked havoc on company performance.” Fifteen years later, such commentary is eerily familiar in Australia, especially following Catherine Brenner’s resignation from AMP earlier this year.

When Ryan tested the theory suggested in the Times piece, she found that poor company performance didn’t follow the appointment of women, but rather that such poor performance was in occurring before the women got such jobs.

May is negotiating on multiple fronts and fighting insurrections within her own party. If she is somehow successful, she will achieve something a large portion of those she governs simply do not want to happen. Then there are those who did vote to leave, saying May hasn’t gone far enough.

The task is one that’s almost impossible to achieve, and yet success is unlikely to please anyone.

So has she been tempted to resign? Asked the question by Sky News this morning, May replied “No, I haven’t.”

We recently spoke more about the ‘Glass Cliff’ theory on the Women’s Agenda podcast. 

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That’s the phenomenon that sees women appointed to leadership roles when the risk of failure is often at its highest point.

We talk about it particularly in the context of women replacing men in a leadership roles, when the man has been ‘removed’ or ‘resigned’ due to unacceptable behaviour.

We also talk ‘Glass Cliff’ in reference to Georgie’s piece this week, noting that “not even men behaving badly gives women a fair shot at leadership.”

We share some stats and ideas on the phenomenon, and attempt to ask the question: would you take on a new role, if you knew the risks of failure in the position were unacceptably high?

We also discuss books! And the huge pile that’s landed in the office written by Australian women that we can’t wait to get stuck into.

Search Women’s Agenda to subscribe on iTunes, or listen below: 

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Among these are men who had allegedly been harassing and abusing women for years without encountering anything remotely like accountability. That 200 men have lost substantial authority and influence is, evidently, not nothing and yet there is something troubling in the New York Times’ analysis.

Of the 200 men dismissed, 124 have been replaced. In 54 cases the replacement has been a woman, compared to 70 men.

We tallied 201 men who have lost jobs or major roles in the past year of #metoo. We also examined who replaced them. https://t.co/r9AwISjUQU

— NYT Graphics (@nytgraphics) October 23, 2018

It is clear that even when men behave spectacularly badly, when they are fired amid public storms for their misconduct, women are still not afforded parity of opportunity.

It is sobering to consider that only 43% of #MeToo offenders have been replaced by women.

That number is, obviously, better than if women comprised just 10% of replacements, or 20% or 30%. But if women cannot even achieve parity of appointments in this scenario, when the vacancies arise because men have disgraced themselves en-masse, in many instances abusing the very power discrepancy that exists between men and women in organisations where women are not represented in senior leadership, it’s difficult to imagine when they ever will.

Stepping in to clean up the mess left by a serial #MeToo protagonist might not be any person’s professional dream and could well be described as another ‘glass-cliff’ scenario.

In many cases it is naive to imagine that the behaviour which was finally called to account, courtesy of #MeToo, was unknown. If nothing else #MeToo has exposed the toxic truth that sexual harassment has rarely been perpetrated in isolation by the odd lone wolf: in too many cases it has been systemically protected.

For a replacement navigating the dynamic of who had known and was involved in the minimisation or concealment of the offender’s misconduct may well be messy. A poisoned chalice, even. But if women aren’t given an equal shot now when will they ever?

If an organisation is serious about redressing a culture in which harassment flourished, in which the power imbalance between men and women could too readily be abused, looking for female replacements seems an obvious starting point. And yet not even half of organisations that have dismissed an offender have done that.

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And yet, the preceding political turmoil meant that is exactly what she did. She became the second woman in the UK’s history to occupy the position of Prime Minister. And the circumstances were nothing short of dire.

She was charged with leading the party, and the nation, during a time of immense uncertainty and confusion. She was to steer the UK towards an historic arrangement she hadn’t voted for.

In sport, it would be described as a hospital pass.

In business it is called a “glass cliff”. It describes the proven phenomenon of a woman receiving a notable promotion during a time of crisis.

Mary Barra, for example, was appointed CEO General Motors in less than ideal circumstances. It was the first time the company had been led by a woman and the business was far from cruising. Marissa Mayer’s appointment at the head of Yahoo was similarly vexed.

Prof @shellkryan's #glasscliff research made it to the @BBCNews live #election results page: https://t.co/cRtOZwwYEZ#GeneralElection pic.twitter.com/gFioXu2iYd

— University of Exeter News (@UniofExeterNews) June 9, 2017

A 2013 study found that among Fortune 500 companies, women and minorities were more likely to be promoted to CEO at companies with weak performance.

In a seminal piece of research, Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam found that female CEOs were more likely to be appointed to organisations whose share prices were already falling.

Ryan and Haslem’s study shows women are selected for leadership positions ahead of equally qualified men “when (and only when) there is a high risk of organisational and leader failure”.

A sociologist at the Clayman Institute for Gender Research at Stanford University, Marianne Cooper, says women don’t just get fewer leadership opportunities. “They also get different kinds of leadership opportunities,” she said. “When you look at opportunities for leadership that one might describe as high-risk, women are more likely to be selected into that kind of role.”

A broad explanation is that in a time of crisis, people are willing to take more risks. When the chips are down trying something different becomes attractive, which is why the “glass cliff” exists.

It doesn’t, of course, explain the success or failure of any female leader in any setting. There are many exceptions.

But when a woman assumes a leadership position on the precipice of failure, she is undermined before she begins.

There is no doubt that Theresa May occupied the position of Prime Minister on a glass cliff. Anyone who took the position would have. Which is why David Cameron, and the pro-Brexit London Mayor Boris Johnson, for example, stepped out of the fray.

Friday’s election result was nothing short of catastrophic for May. It substantially reduced her mandate to lead, frustrated the electorate and heightened the level of political uncertainty in the UK.

Some of that is on her. For calling the election early, for running a dismal campaign, for misreading the sentiment among voters. But some of it was pre-ordained.

Was it ever going to be possible for May to lead effectively? Some would say her leadership prospects were doomed before she even began.

That is worth remembering if – and when – the temptation to write female leadership off as a failed experiment arises.

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