Following the election of the first female Vice President of the United States and the rising number of powerful female leaders across the globe, you would be forgiven for assuming women were finally overcoming the barriers of discrimination preventing them from reaching the highest offices and the most desirable leadership positions. The elusive and impenetrable glass ceiling has not just been cracked, but utterly destroyed by the powerful women we are now so accustomed to seeing – Angela Merkel, Jacinda Ardern, Nicola Sturgeon, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, Ursula von der Leyen, to name but a few.

But, ladies, don’t get too comfortable yet. The battle for parity has only just begun. 

Unbeknownst to many, the patriarchy has – oh so characteristically – placed yet another barrier in front of our quest for equality. We succeeded in cutting off one slithering head of the hydra, but two more have simply grown back in its place. 

You’ve all heard of the glass ceiling. Now, get ready for the newest form of workplace discrimination. It’s as ground-breaking as the teaching Edinburgh University promised its students, as hard to spot as a Republican in an anti-abortion rally, and as common as a rugby player with multiple STIs.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you… the glass cliff. 

“What is the glass cliff?” I hear you ask. Fantastic question. It’s a lovely way of accidentally ensuring that women fail no matter how high up the corporate or political ladder they climb. I haven’t made this up. Political scientists Michelle Ryan and Alexander Haslam uncovered this phenomenon back in 2005 in response to an article in The Times, “Women on Board – help or hindrance?” which claimed that women in FTSE 100 company boardrooms had “wreaked havoc on companies’ performance.” Ryan and Haslam turned this logic on its head, arguing that it was, in fact, the poor performance of the companies which precipitated the promotion of women to leadership positions. 

Why would they do this? The cynical answer is scapegoating. Setting women up to fail. Allowing women to take the fall during a company’s darkest hour so a man can swoop in and save the day once the crisis has passed. 

The kinder answer is that women are promoted in a crisis to signal that a company is making fundamental changes. As most companies have a male-dominated leadership history, a woman in charge can be used to indicate the start of a radical transformation of businesses which find themselves in deep water, reassuring investors and revitalising the company performance. Following this rationale, female executives face a double whammy – not only have they endured discrimination in their perpetual exclusion from boardrooms, but it is this very exclusion which makes them a novelty, and thus more likely to be promoted in unfavourable circumstances. 

There’s more. Due to this constant exclusion of women from the top positions, when they are offered a promotion to say, CEO, they are much less likely to turn it down, even if the company is tanking, because they know that they probably won’t get another chance. Men, on the other hand, get senior positions practically thrown at them every day, so why would they risk taking a promotion in a crisis? They can afford to just let the crisis pass, knowing they will get another offer when things are better. Women, in a truly Hamiltonian style, cannot just throw away their shot.

Hence, the phrase “glass cliff.” A woman might break through the glass ceiling only to find herself in an extremely precarious situation, atop a cliff made of glass that she did not even see until it was too late; and if she’s not careful, she might just fall off. 

It seems the patriarchy is always finding new forms of discrimination, new ways to keep women off the sofa and on the streets in protest, lest we become too comfortable in any small equality we gain. God forbid women might run out of things to protest – we might never leave the house, become complacent, or gain weight, and then we would be unpleasing to the male eye. Disaster!

The most notable and high-profile example of the glass cliff in recent times is the sad, sad case of Theresa May. 

Don’t get me wrong, I am no fan of Theresa May. Honestly, I think she’s diabolical, second to none in her awfulness other than maybe the Iron Lady herself (who, coincidentally, also faced a glass cliff, only she didn’t fall off it, because she committed enough war crimes for the Conservative Party to take her seriously). But my dislike for May does not mean I don’t feel sorry for her. She was dealt a pretty crappy hand. Elected after the disastrous EU referendum, Johnson and the other Brexiteers nowhere to be seen, the country in tatters, completely divided – she didn’t stand a chance. 

But let’s look at the leadership contest for a second. The five candidates were Stephen Crabb, Liam Fox, Michael Gove, Andrea Leadsom, and the dancing queen herself. Johnson flirted with running but mysteriously withdrew. Fox was eliminated in the first round and Crabb withdrew the same day. Then Gove was eliminated, leaving the two women to a bizarre contest about who was a better mother, as if they felt the need to shout to the country “WE ARE WOMEN.” 

Leadsom withdrew, making May the automatic winner.

May, arguably, now stood at the edge of a glass cliff. If we’re being kind, she teetered on the brink for three years before falling off. If we’re being honest, May fell off the cliff in 2017… it just took two years for her to hit the ground.

And where are the men who withdrew from the leadership contest, now? Where are the Brexiteers who fought to leave the EU, then abandoned ship once they realised the vessel was wrecked? Johnson is currently sitting pretty in Number 10 with Gove stuck halfway up his arse.

It’s not just women who face a glass cliff. Research by Clara Kulich, Michelle Ryan, and Alexander Haslam shows that in the 2001, 2005, and 2010 elections, the Conservatives fielded a disproportionate number of black, Asian, and minority ethnic candidates in seats they were almost sure to lose. Yet, such damning evidence of the unjust selection processes for parliamentary candidates has gone largely unchallenged. 

Unfortunately, there is no remedy for the glass cliff. If anything, it is a self-perpetuating form of discrimination. The more people from marginalised groups are promoted or elected in times of crisis, the more frequently they will fail, further convincing the sexists, racists, and bigots in society of their unsuitability for leadership positions. While options such as quotas might help women and BAME candidates get a foot in the door, they do little to help in scenarios where a promotion or leadership election is largely determined by white men with plausible deniability.

The only option available is to simply be more present. The more women and BAME people in a certain sector, the wider the pool of candidates and the more likely that, over time, they will be selected for a promotion in favourable circumstances. It isn’t a perfect solution, but it might be the only one available to us.

Perhaps, one final thought to consider is whether Kamala Harris faces a glass cliff. 

The ingenuity of the glass cliff is that whenever a woman gets elected to a leadership position, we are often too busy celebrating the smashing of the glass ceiling to contemplate whether the quality of the leadership position is actually equal to that available, and frequently offered, to a man. Yes, it’s fantastic that the U.S. has elected its first female VP. But being elected in the middle of a pandemic, a terrifying rise in white supremacy, and an attempted coup is far from ideal.

Perhaps someone should issue a warning to Kamala, or to all women in positions of authority, for that matter: Don’t get too comfortable atop your glass cliff. One gust of patriarchal wind and you might very well just fall off.

Lottie Needham is a fourth year student at the University of Edinburgh studying History and Politics.