“Gender representation and just overall diversity representation is here to stay, certainly at any consumer company and definitely at any retailer,” said Catherine Lepard, who leads executive searches for retail firms at Heidrick & Struggles. “However, what we have seen in 2023 — because so many retailers have found this to be a very difficult year — is that the first priority is just to make sure they’ve got the right athlete in the job, regardless of any other factors, to get the job done, to make sure that there is still going to be a company going in 2024 and a sustainable future for all of the employees and stakeholders.”
Christy Glass, a professor of sociology at Utah State University who has been studying gender and racial representation within corporate America for 16 years, said she was not surprised by the current hiring trend. Her research has shown that women are often appointed to chief executive roles when a company is looking to show a bold strategy in the face of a precarious financial situation, a concept often referred to as the glass cliff. This tracks with Ms. Gove’s appointment at Bed Bath & Beyond and the hiring of Sonia Syngal as the chief executive of Gap Inc. in March 2020, just as the coronavirus pandemic was coming into full view. (Ms. Syngal left the company in July 2022, and Gap recently hired Richard Dickson as chief executive.)
The more hiring of men to chief executive roles could be seen as the “savior effect,” said Ms. Glass, who is working on a forthcoming study about executive dismissals.
“I think during a crisis, the glass cliff would claim that the logic there is, ‘let’s show shareholders, let’s show the public, let’s show stakeholders, we’re going to go in a bold new direction,’ and part of signaling that bold new direction is appointing a woman C.E.O.,” Ms. Glass said. “Whereas then the savior effect is a way of saying, ‘OK, we tried that. We’re going to kind of go back to the status quo: safe and steady to navigate through this crisis.’”
There are reasons for optimism, however. Lorraine Hariton, chief executive of Catalyst, noted that the percentage of women running Fortune 500 companies had doubled in the past five years (rising to 10.4 percent from 4.8 percent).
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