Are Women CEOs Less Popular Than Men?

A few weeks ago, Glassdoor, the online jobs and recruiting platform, published its annual list of the 50 Best CEOs. Every year, it offers an interesting measure of employee sentiment — a gauge of who’s getting it right and who’s falling short. But one of the most noticeable things about this year’s list was the conspicuous absence of women in the top 10. The highest-ranking woman is Lynsi Snyder, the owner and heiress of the West Coast fastfood chain In-N-Out Burger.

The lack of gender — and, indeed, racial — diversity atop corporate management is, of course, nothing new. But this latest list raises some interesting questions. The ranking is based on employee reviews of their leaders. Women currently account for about 9% of S&P 500 CEOs and about 11% of Fortune 500 CEOs. So an all-male top 10 is not, by itself, statistically surprising.

But what about the broader story? Do employees rate women CEOs less favorably than men? It’s a tough question to answer, but I put it to Daniel Zhao, chief economist at Glassdoor.

“The fact that few of the best CEOs are women is a reflection of the fact that there are still few women in the top spot at companies,” he explained. “The glass ceiling still holds back women from climbing the corporate ladder and getting to the CEO position, but even once they’re there, research shows that women CEOs are perceived differently than their male peers.”

“For example, research using Glassdoor data finds that women CEOs are rated lower than their male peers, even after controlling for firm performance,” Zhao said. “Research also shows other ways that women CEOs are not set up for success, like women CEOs being more likely to be fired or the ‘glass cliff,’ where women CEOs are more likely to be hired into worse-performing situations.”

The underrepresentation of women in corporate leadership, then, clearly contributes to their scarcity among the top-ranked CEOs. But that isn’t necessarily the whole explanation. As Zhao emphasizes, it “shouldn’t be taken as a reason to ignore the additional barriers that women in leadership often face.”

A total of five women made it into the top 50 list. In addition to Snyder, they were Tricia Griffith of Progressive Insurance, Abby Johnson of Fidelity Investments, Jennifer Rumsey of Cummins, and Amy Gilliland of General Dynamics Information Technology.