(Bloomberg Opinion) -- The glass ceiling is still impenetrable, and the glass cliff is still perilously steep.
That's the takeaway from what's been a maddening week for women trying to make their way into the C-suites of corporate America.
Over at Goldman Sachs Group Inc., Beth Hammack is reportedly departing the company after 30 years. Bloomberg News described her as a one-time “likely CFO pick” and one of the few candidates poised to break into Goldman's top ranks, which are overwhelming male and white — even by Wall Street standards. Despite its pledges to diversify its management ranks, Goldman has never had a female chair, CEO, president or CFO. Last month, when its investment bank created two new committees comprised of emerging leaders, only three of 25 members selected were women, including Hammack.
We don't know exactly why Hammack decided to leave, but we have plenty of clues. The company passed her over as CFO in 2021, instead moving Hammack into a position it claimed would eventually lead to a more senior role. (Spoiler alert: it didn't.) And that's despite being described by colleagues and industry insiders as a “unique talent who dedicated her life to the firm,” a “deep intellect” and “bound for higher office.”
Goldman appears to have been keenly aware of what Hammack might symbolize for the bank, weighing not just her professional development, but also the optics of her career moves. Her promotion to treasurer in 2018 was controversial, with top management at odds over whether the “trading unit could spare one of its rare senior women.”
She was said to have lacked “the swagger” of Goldman's high-fliers and kept her “ties to a number of illustrious industry figures under close wrap,” according to a Bloomberg News profile of Hammack from 2020. This encapsulates the lose-lose position in which women at Hammack's level frequently find themselves. Too little swagger and she's considered “atypical” for Goldman; too much and research suggests she would risk being marked as overly ambitious.
The most striking and cringe-worthy bit of that 2020 profile was this anecdote from a former Goldman executive: “She's brilliant and she can explain the most complicated things in standard English. Once I thought of challenging her and asked if she could explain something in a Haiku.”
There's a metaphor there — the impossible standards women at the top are held to, the extra mile they are asked to go, how little their time is valued. And no surprise, Hammack delivered the haiku first thing the next morning. So why did she leave? Maybe she just got tired jumping through all those hoops and never landing at the top.
Boeing's Glass Cliff
Often the only way women can break the kind of glass ceiling Hammack faced is by taking on jobs that put them at the precipice of the glass cliff — jobs that have a high risk of failure. While many men don't want these kinds of roles on their resume, women will often take them because it's their shot at advancement.
Enter Boeing Co., which has plenty of precarious jobs available since it is in full-on crisis mode. This week the company tapped Katie Ringgold to replace the ousted head of the wildly troubled 737 Max program. The company also promoted longtime executive Elizabeth Lund into a new role overseeing quality of the company's commercial planes. Their rise fits neatly with existing data about how women often get appointed during a time of crisis. They're expected to clean up the mess but end up taking the blame — and the fall — if they can't.
This phenomenon helps explain a new report from Fortune this week that found that the average tenure for female Fortune 500 CEOs is significantly shorter than it is for men — 4.5 years versus 7.2 years. Companies appoint women in tough times “because they need a visible sign of change at the top; plus, women are regarded as democratic, healing fixers. In reality, when more women CEOs are positioned to fail, they do, dragging down the average tenure,” Fortune writes. Taking on these risky roles often exposes them to attack by activist investors; female CEOs have about a 50% higher likelihood of being targeted, research has shown. Women leaders are also more likely to be scrutinized than their male counterparts and to have their competence questioned.
For women trying to crack the highest levels of management, a choice between hitting the glass ceiling or diving off the glass cliff doesn't feel like much of a choice at all. If those are the only options, we can expect to see more departures along the lines of Hammack from Goldman. I guess then the bosses will have to write their own haikus.
This column does not necessarily reflect the opinion of the editorial board or Bloomberg LP and its owners.
Beth Kowitt is a Bloomberg Opinion columnist covering corporate America. She was previously a senior writer and editor at Fortune Magazine.
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