A US study has found female CEOs have a harder time keeping their jobs than men.
The research into CEOs at the world’s 2,500 largest public companies found that women are more likely to be pushed out of top jobs sooner, with more than one third (38 per cent) of female CEOs being forced out over the last decade, compared with one quarter (27 per cent) of men.
This is despite the fact that women represented only three per cent of new CEOs in the first place.
The news comes after two high profile sackings of female media executives in the last week. Jill Abramson, the executive editor of the New York Times newspaper, was swiftly sacked by publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr, and Natalie Nougayrède, editor-in-chief of the French title Le Monde, was pushed out following a senior-staff revolt.
Speculation around the women’s leadership styles has been swirling, with Abramson being described as “pushy” and “bossy” (words especially reserved for females in leadership positions) and Nougayrède’s demise being attributed to her shake-up inside the newspaper.
The authors of Strategy&’s report have not linked these public sackings to their study’s findings, but according to The Guardian newspaper, co-author Ken Favaro said Abramson’s experience was “not inconsistent” with the study’s findings: “She wasn’t given a whole lot of time to develop her track record and earn her tenure.”
The report’s authors attribute the discrepancies between women’s and men’s experiences to the fact that women are more often parachuted into top roles, rather than being promoted from within the company.
“Women are more often outsiders,” says co-author Ken Favaro. “So they’re more vulnerable. They don’t know the organisation. They can’t diagnose the problems as quickly and don’t understand the culture or how to get it to work for them – and they aren’t necessarily given more time to deliver.”
