Successful businesswomen who manage to break through the glass ceiling should be careful they don't find themselves falling off a "glass cliff" to professional doom, Women's Affairs Minister Lianne Dalziel said yesterday.
Ms Dalziel said more women were breaking through the glass ceiling - a phrase coined todescribe the bias women faced in getting to the top of an organisation - but it was not necessarily always in the person's best interests to make the breakthrough.
The term "glass cliff" was coined after a British study found that company performance leading up to the appointment of a director differed depending on the gender of the appointee. Companies that appointed men tended to have stable share prices before and after the appointment.
"However, companies that appointed a woman were more likely to have consistently poor performance in the months preceding the appointment," Ms Dalziel told the Hobson Leavy luncheon for senior business women in Auckland.
"This became known as the 'glass cliff phenomenon', where women's leadership positions are relatively risky or precarious since they are more likely to involve management of organisational units in crisis."
The study showed that when provided with details of two equally qualified candidates for a leadership position - one male and one female - respondents favoured the woman if the position involved a high risk of failure.
Those in the study said this was because they believed women had abilities that were valuable in a crisis.
"I think they think that women have less to lose. While a directorship is a great opportunity, it is critical to ensure that the position is the opportunity it is made out to be."
