When Woolworths CEO Brad Banducci introduced his resignation this week, it stunned no-one. His exit follows a catastrophic walk-out throughout an interview with ABC’s 4 Corners, credible accusations of worth gouging by the grocery store big, and the general public and political responses to the retailer’s resolution to cease stocking “Australia Day” merchandise this 12 months.
However whereas Banducci will get to depart with $24 million in Woolworths shares and an estimated $6.5 million in pay for the previous 9 months of employment alone, the incoming chief govt of the grocery store big now has much more on her plate. With a gendered aspect dish to accompany her transition into the highest job.
Banducci’s successor is Amanda Bardwell, the present managing director of Woolworths’ e-commerce department, WooliesX. She would be the first girl to steer the corporate. Whereas Bardwell has greater than 23 years of expertise on the retailer and is undoubtedly certified to tackle the highest job, her shattering of the glass ceiling can also see her fall head-first over the glass cliff.
The glass ceiling is a metaphor referring to the invisible limitations that stop individuals of oppressed teams — race, gender, class, and so on — from rising into management positions and the higher echelons of an influence construction.
The glass cliff is an extension of this metaphor. It proposes that if girls or individuals of minority teams are elevated to positions of seniority, it’s extra more likely to happen in circumstances related to an elevated danger of criticism and failure. Ladies’s management positions are then perceived as extra insecure than these of males. In these circumstances, fault is extra more likely to be related broadly with their gender, race or different minority standing, in flip re-strengthening the glass ceiling that locked oppressed teams out within the first occasion.
Assume Vanessa Hudson changing Alan Joyce after Qantas’ reputational fallout, or Marissa Mayer being elevated to CEO of Yahoo after it misplaced important market share to Google. Assume Theresa Could turning into prime minister after the pound dropped to unseen ranges following Brexit, or Linda Yaccarino taking the helm of X (previously Twitter) after the turbulent acquisition by Elon Musk. Assume share market falls, reputational injury, or on this case, an ABC 4 Corners humiliation exhibiting a extreme lack of media coaching after a interval of worth gouging that has thrust the Australian public additional into a price of dwelling disaster.
Constantly, girls are elevated to the best ranks when no males wish to stand on the bow of a sinking ship. However for girls and different oppressed teams, particularly those that face exacerbated and interlocking types of discrimination and marginalisation, this can be their solely alternative on the high spot.
It’s essential to notice that these precarious positions of energy will not be a present bestowed on underqualified girls; fairly the alternative. The glass cliff just isn’t pointing to a lack of know-how or expertise; it’s amplifiying the importance of how individuals of minority standing are appointed to energy: when there may be nowhere left to show, when there is a chance to put blame elsewhere, or when merely no man needs the job.
These tales don’t exist in a vacuum, nonetheless, and this isn’t to say that girls gained’t recuperate from these company catastrophes and discover success. Bardwell, with greater than twenty years on the higher finish of this overpriced meals chain, has been an lively and highly effective contributor to the place through which Woolworths finds itself. Her privilege and senior function throughout this era of downturn is a crucial undeniable fact that shouldn’t be ignored. Nevertheless, it stays noteworthy that firms usually tend to place individuals from oppressed teams in positions of energy as companies crumble, making them extra more likely to fall, and from a higher peak.
It’s important that we determine and critique the glass cliff in motion as a result of, if left unchecked, it wrongly imposes a social and cultural bias in the direction of the established order. It associates stability with white males, the identical males who drove the companies and teams they signify right into a state of disrepair within the first occasion. Drawing consideration to those falsehoods is on the crux of the battle for equality.
As Bardwell makes an attempt to rework the narrative of a company far departed from the communities it claims to service, the structural problem stays: when and the way will leaders representing minority teams be afforded equal alternative to steer?