The Visibility Problem for Female CEOs

Just read an interesting article about the problem of visibility and female CEOs.  The Harvard Business Review blog brought up some good points, some of which counter what I thought was conventional wisdom, i.e. that women are only asked to lead companies that are already in trouble. The authors found this not to be the case.

On the other hand, they found a trend that most female CEOs come from outside the company and that stock prices dropped after announcements of new female CEOs but not after announcing a new male CEO.  While the article didn't make a direct connection to the root cause of these issues, they did allude to the fact that the media could be playing a part in it:

Nancy McKinstry, CEO of Wolters Kluwer, a Dutch publishing and information company, recalled holding a strategy meeting in which the press in Holland wrote that she wore a suit that was the same color as the KLM flight attendants'. As she told the New York Times recently, "Here we were talking about the plans for the business and that's what they focused on."

When you add that to the recent Forbes commentary about how women need to stop dressing sexy, it makes you wonder whether the subtle bias/influence of the media might have more of an impact than one would think on our perception of leadership.