Even in 2024, there’s no shortage of obstacles keeping women from leadership positions. In disappointing news, it turns out that for many of them, the view is no rosier once they actually ascend to the top.
Of the 68 CEOs appointed in the first quarter of 2024, as tabulated by executive search firm Russell Reynolds in its quarterly index, just five were women. At that rate, global gender parity won’t arrive for nearly 90 years, they predict. (And that’s being optimistic; the World Economic Forum pegs it at 132 years.)
“To achieve true gender balance at the top, we need to create systemic changes to how succession is planned, managed, and executed,” Russell Reynolds writes in its latest Global CEO Turnover Index report. “The scope of CEO candidacy needs to be widened and organizations need to take the preparation of women for CEO roles far more seriously—investing more in their women leaders, increasing pipelines, and addressing bias.”
In other words, take seriously the perils of the glass ceiling and the glass cliff, which continue to hamstring women’s progress—especially for women of color.
A distressing sign of the times: Failed CEO appointments (which Russell Reynolds categorizes as those lasting less than two years) are on the rise. More than 15% of outgoing CEOs in the most recent quarter were “failed,” so to speak. Compare that to 2019, when less than 10% of outgoing CEOs lasted at the helm for a matter of months.
The average CEO tenure in 2023 spanned just over eight years, with internal hires outlasting external ones and veteran chief executives hanging on longer than new ones. The picture is also better for men; women, on global average, last just five years in the CEO role.
“CEO transitions are generally supported by the Chair and the nominations committee,” Ty Wiggins, head of Russell Reynolds’ CEO and Executive Transition practice, tells Fortune. Other key supporters often include the CHRO, CFO and COOs.
The problem of short female CEO tenures doesn’t appear to have notably worsened since the pandemic, Wiggins says. Rather, the greater number of women in leadership at any given time is just making the problem starker. “We know that the first two years are critical to success,” he goes on. “Better Board support, better alignment of expectations around performance, access to external advisory and more transparent communication will all help improve women CEOs’ outcomes.”
The underlying cause is likely the punishing economic environment, the firm posits, which has lit a fire beneath company boards, prompting them to swiftly ax any underperformers, lest they bring company performance down with them. That means a CEO who, in another macroeconomic landscape, might have had some wiggle room to establish themselves or roll out their plans, these days is forced to cobble together a team quickly. Any amount of doubt from their team might spell trouble—fast.
Russell Reynolds, for its part, encourages a bit more leniency on the part of boards; no one wins when a string of CEOs depart before they have a chance to make things better.
That’s especially true among women CEOs, who Russell Reynolds found are more than twice as likely as men to depart their role within two years of taking it. Women are also four times as likely as their male counterparts to last less than a year as CEO. “Boards cannot ignore their accountability for a new CEO’s success, and many are not doing enough to set women candidates up to succeed,” Russell Reynolds wrote of that statistic.
It’s a universal problem: Deloitte’s new Women @ Work survey, which drew data from 5,000 women across the globe, found that half of them say they’re more stressed now than they were last year, and they’re concerned about their mental health, work-life balance, and ability to make ends meet.
That’s alongside the fact that advancements are slowly, steadily coming. For the first time last year, over 10% of CEOs of Fortune 500 companies were women. “Diverse leaders have had to continuously reinvent and adapt at a personal level throughout their careers,” Accenture CEO Julie Sweet told Fortune’s Emma Hinchliffe. “They’re resilient, adaptable, and have to be pioneers.”
Plus, with adequate attention to fostering and uplifting female talent, the Fortune 500 could stand to double its percentage of women leaders within five years, Jane Stevenson, global leader for the succession practice at consultancy Korn Ferry, told Hinchliffe.
When women lead, everyone wins. According to a recent report from HR consultancy DDI, companies with women leaders consistently outperform their counterparts. The highest performing firms they studied maintained a leadership bench that was at least 23% women, DDI’s CEO, Tacy Byham, wrote for Fortune. “Organizations can proactively improve by carefully examining their own leadership pipelines and start being more intentional in preparing women and diverse talent for advancement, rather than for their next career move.”
