{"id":1381,"date":"2017-11-20T08:00:45","date_gmt":"2017-11-20T12:00:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/?p=1381"},"modified":"2017-11-20T08:00:45","modified_gmt":"2017-11-20T12:00:45","slug":"where-are-the-women-ceos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.annelitwin.com\/blog\/uncategorized\/where-are-the-women-ceos\/","title":{"rendered":"Where Are the Women CEOs?"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\tIn business and in politics, few women have made it to the top\u2014none in politics in the United States, as seen with Hillary Clinton\u2019s recent loss in the 2016 presidential race. And Catalyst reports that the percentage of female CEOs of Fortune 500 companies has been stuck at 5 percent for a very long time. Why has there been so little progress?\nOne factor explaining the dearth of female CEOs is described by Katrin Bennhold of the New York Times<\/em> as the phenomenon of the glass cliff<\/em>.<\/a> The concept of the glass cliff, coined in 2005 by two professors at Exeter University in the United Kingdom, posits that \u201cwomen are often placed in positions of power when the situation is dire, men are uninterested and the likelihood of success is low.\u201d Bennhold gives the example of the election of Theresa May to prime minister of the United Kingdom right after the Brexit vote, which put her immediately into a lose-lose situation where her chances of success were very low. Bennhold goes on to note that all the men responsible for Brexit \u201cstabbed each other soundly in the back\u201d and ran away. Julie Creswell writes that researchers at Utah State University also report that women are more likely to be promoted to the top job of troubled companies<\/a> and then \u201c[lack] the support or authority\u201d to make necessary changes. In other words, women are less likely to succeed in glass cliff appointments, and their tenure is often shorter because they are under conditions detrimental to success.\nSusan Chira of the New York Times<\/em> describes other factors that contribute to the low number of female CEOs,<\/a> based on interviews she conducted with dozens of senior women who competed to be CEOs but did not succeed. These women concluded that the barriers for women are \u201cmore deeply rooted and persistent than they wanted to believe.\u201d They reported these barriers:\n\n\n