A senior partner at the consulting firm McKinsey has been removed from his leadership roles after questioning whether women face a “glass cliff” at work.
In now-deleted LinkedIn comments, reported by Bloomberg, Chris Bradley called the glass cliff “a very convenient way to always be a victim in the rain”.
Despite losing the leadership roles, Bradley remains a senior partner at the firm.
The news comes as the Workplace Gender Equality Agency (WGEA) found women’s career progression still hasn’t translated into the most senior roles.
Glass cliff
The glass cliff is a term that describes how women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership roles during a crisis or difficult period, when the risk of failure is higher.
If the leader fails, it can be blamed on them, rather than on the circumstances they inherited.
It was coined in the mid-2000s by researchers Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam.
Comments
Chris Bradley is a Sydney-based senior partner at McKinsey.
Until this week, he was a director at the firm’s research arm, the McKinsey Global Institute (MGI).
Last month, a LinkedIn user posted about the glass cliff to promote a new book.
Bradley commented on the post, questioning whether the glass cliff exists (those comments are now deleted).
He said the issue didn’t rank “in the top 1000 problems of the world”.
“We once had a problem of female advancement to CEO, but now we have a new problem that the jobs they get are too hard?
Is this actually a thing?”
Bradley in a now-deleted LinkedIn comment, according to Bloomberg.
Aftermath
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McKinsey said it was “disappointed” by the comments and did not endorse them.
After an internal review, the firm removed Bradley as a director of MGI and from leadership roles on some internal committees.
However, he remains a senior partner at the firm.
“His public comments fell well short of the standards we expect at our firm,” a spokesperson said in a statement.
McKinsey and Bradley have not responded to TDA’s request for comment.
New report
The news comes as the WGEA today released research on women in leadership.
The report, produced with Curtin University, found women are being promoted into management, but more are leaving leadership roles before they reach the top.
It also found that ASX companies with more women in leadership positions outperformed their peers on market value and investor returns.
Michelle Ryan
Michelle Ryan, one of the researchers who coined the term “glass cliff”, is a professor at ANU.
She told TDA that the research shows a glass cliff is real and measurable.
“In two decades of researching the glass cliff, we are confident that it is a robust phenomenon,” she said.
“Not every women leader faces a glass cliff, and men are often in risky and precarious leadership positions, but women are disproportionally represented in glass cliff positions.”
“Pointing out that real, structural inequalities exist is not playing the victim card, it is reporting evidence, sharing experiences, understanding the subtlety of gender inequality, and calling for a change.
There is power in that, not victimisation.”
Professor Michelle Ryan on the glass cliff framing women as victims.
