The perception that high-achieving businesswomen are more vulnerable than their male counterparts to being abruptly fired — pushed off the "glass cliff" in the contemporary corporate vernacular — has been borne out by a new study from a global management consultancy.
Researchers at Strategy&, formerly known as Booz & Company, found that women are forced out of chief executive positions more than a third of the time, while only a quarter of men in similar positions suffer the same fate.
The precarious position of women in the highest echelons of power — illustrated last week by the dramatic departures of Jill Abramson and Natalie Nougayrede as the editors of The New York Times and Le Monde — remains a stubborn fact of corporate life.