Source: The Conversation – Canada
Every so often, a headline declares that women make better leaders. A widely cited 2019 Harvard Business Review analysis, for instance, found women outscored men on most leadership competencies.
But if women really do outperform men at the top, what explains the difference? A 2005 review of 46 meta-analyses found relatively few consistent psychological differences between women and men. That doesn’t rule out differences relevant to leadership. But it suggests we should look beyond individual traits and consider the selection process itself.
Our recent research published in the Academy of Management Proceedings, and a related working paper, found the performance gap may tell us less about who the CEOs are than about what it took for them to get the job.
Who gets through the leadership filter?
Becoming CEO of a major publicly traded company is difficult for anyone. Women, however, may face additional hurdles along the way, including less access to informal networks, greater scrutiny of their performance and persistent assumptions about their competence and suitability for leadership.
Suppose two groups have similar distributions of ability, but one faces a higher threshold for advancement. Those who clear the higher threshold will, on average, be more highly selected. Their stronger performance does not necessarily mean the group had greater ability to begin with. Rather, it can reflect the demands of the selection process.
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By the time people become CEOs, they have already passed through years of hiring, promotion and selection decisions. If those decisions impose different standards on different groups, the people who emerge at the top will reflect those standards.
On gender alone, it is difficult to distinguish this explanation from the possibility that women really are better suited to contemporary leadership. Performance data cannot settle that question, so we also looked at race.
Race reveals a broader pattern
Research has also found that companies with more ethnic and cultural diversity on their executive teams are more likely to outperform on profitability.
If discrimination helps explain why female CEOs appear to outperform, the same logic should apply to racialized executives. Racialized women face both sets of barriers. If those disadvantages compound, they should be the standout performers.
That is the pattern we found using data on more than 11,000 firm-year observations of large, publicly traded companies in the United States between 1998 and 2013. Firms led by racializd women posted the strongest financial performance, followed by white women, then racialized men. White men, who made up most CEOs in our sample, came in at the bottom.
That ordering is difficult to explain with a simple “gender advantage” or “diversity advantage” story. It is consistent with a filtering explanation: the more barriers a group faces on the way up, the more exceptional the people who make it through are likely to be.
One study of Black CEO appointments found similar evidence. Newly appointed Black CEOs held far more advanced degrees than their white counterparts. The researchers concluded that Black CEOs face an excessively high qualification threshold.
Another explanation: Self-selection
Self-selection is another possible explanation for the pattern we found. Women and racialized executives may be less likely to put themselves forward for senior positions unless they feel particularly well qualified.
If so, they could enter the CEO pool with stronger qualifications than candidates who are more willing to pursue opportunities with less certainty of success. That could also produce a highly selected group of leaders and help explain the performance differences we observe.
But self-selection alone does not explain why women and racialized executives are more likely to be appointed when the company itself is struggling.
We also looked at when these appointments occur. We found companies are significantly more likely to appoint a woman or a racialized executive when the company is already struggling. Researchers have described this pattern as the “glass cliff.”
Read more:
What is the ‘glass cliff’ phenomenon – and why do women often find themselves on the precipice?
The glass cliff suggests that the selection process differs not only in who reaches the top, but also in the circumstances under which women and racialized executives are given the opportunity to lead.
Why the selection process matters
Does it really matter whether outperformance reflects characteristics of the leaders themselves or the selection process that brought them to the top? This may seem like a technical question, but it matters because the explanation shapes how we respond to the findings.
One interpretation is that women and racialized executives possess distinctive qualities that make them particularly effective leaders. However, this interpretation risks overlooking the barriers that shape who gets the opportunity to lead.
If company boards conclude that women and racialized executives succeed because they possess unusual leadership qualities, they may focus on finding more exceptional candidates from those groups. That leaves the underlying selection process unchanged.
A more useful response is to examine why some candidates have had to clear a higher bar in the first place. If boards want access to more of this talent, they should look closely at barriers that have little to do with ability and work to ensure that candidates are expected to meet comparable standards on the path to leadership.
The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organisation that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.
Original source: https://analysis1.mil-osi.com/2026/08/24/women-and-racialized-ceos-may-outperform-their-peers-because-they-face-tougher-barriers-to-the-top/