The underrepresentation of women in the top executive ranks of U.S. corporations is well-documented. Less understood is what happens after women reach the C-suite: Do they keep these jobs as long as men?

Our research examines this question in depth, assembling a rich dataset on S&P 1500 executives from 2001 to 2021 that tracks both departures and the quality of subsequent job opportunities. The answer is clear – at least for executives just below the CEO level – women face a significantly greater risk of falling from the top ranks. Specifically, we find that female senior executives (excluding CEOs) are 15 percent–20 percent more likely to leave their roles in any given year than their male counterparts with similar profiles. This gap persists after controlling for age, rank, job title, tenure, industry, and many other factors. Over multiple years, the compounded effect can meaningfully reduce female representation at the top.

For CEOs, the story is different: Gender differences in turnover are small and statistically insignificant, suggesting that the dynamics driving excess turnover risk for women operate mainly below the CEO level.

Bigger Trouble When Times Are Bad

The turnover gap we identify is largest when firms are performing particularly poorly, with a gender gap that is twice as large for the poorest-performing firms compared with those with performance in the middle of the pack. This pattern is consistent with a “blame bias” in which women are held more accountable for disappointing results. Supporting this, the gender gap is smaller in industries with a higher proportion of women in senior roles and in firms led by politically active CEOs – settings where bias may be less tolerated. We find no diminishment in the gender turnover gap when firms have a female CEO or more women on the board.

Not Just Opting Out

Could women simply be leaving voluntarily more often? The evidence says no. Severance pay – a signal of involuntary exits – is at least as common for departing women as for men. The gap is also larger among executives under the age of 60, when retirement is less likely. These patterns suggest that women are being pushed out more often, rather than opting out.

Alternative Explanations Fall Short

There are some potential explanations for our findings that do not include gender bias in evaluating female executives. For example, there may be greater uncertainty about the abilities of female executives when they are hired, leading to more dismissals when their performance disappoints. If that were true, we would also expect women to receive more internal promotions when performance is strong. Instead, we find that women are less likely to be promoted near the top, a gap that has narrowed over time but remains significant. It is also possible that women are held more accountable for firm performance because it is a more informative indicator of their abilities. This possibility receives no support in the data, as evidenced by various tests.

Gender Differences in Life After Turnover

We find that most senior executives who are still below retirement age eventually resurface in substantive roles after losing their positions. However, on average, they fall hard and end up at much smaller firms or in lower-ranked positions. Taking this into account, we estimate that the average executive experiences a large decrease in compensation as a result of a turnover event.

Do women fare better than men in this bleak “retread” market, perhaps softening the blow from their greater likelihood of being on this market in the first place? Over the sample as a whole, the answer is no – men and women tend to fall by the same degree, on average, when they lose positions. However, we find that women in more recent years have been somewhat more likely to land relatively good new jobs soon after turnover. We conjecture that this may reflect prospective employers in recent years realizing that there are more highly talented women who end up in the retread pool for questionable reasons.

What is quite clear in the data is that men and women tend to land in different types of new jobs after turnover, even when the overall position level is roughly equal across genders. Specifically, we find that women tend to take lower-ranked roles at relatively larger firms compared with their male counterparts.  This evidence is consistent with prior work suggesting that women tend to prefer safer career choices. We also find that women who have experienced turnover are significantly less likely to secure jobs at elite “high finance” employers, such as private equity firms or hedge funds, consistent with prior evidence on the underrepresentation of women in the upper echelons of the financial world.

Net Consequences

Combining turnover risk with post-turnover outcomes paints a sobering picture. The likelihood of a “bad” outcome – departing and either never resurfacing or taking a job with an estimated pay cut of 20 percent or larger – is about 19 percent higher for women compared with their male counterparts. The likelihood of a much rarer “good” outcome – departing and moving to what appears to be a substantially better job – is slightly higher for women, largely because they turn over more often. However, the elevation in the rate of good outcomes for women is much smaller than the elevation in their bad-outcome rate.  Thus, the net effect is that women on average experience substantially worse outcomes arising from turnover dynamics. The gap has narrowed modestly in recent years, but only time will tell if this trend continues.

Implications

The challenge for women in corporate leadership is not only breaking into top roles but also staying there. Elevated, often involuntary turnover – especially in bad times – means that gains in representation can quickly erode. Unless firms can fully eliminate biases in how executives are evaluated and retained, it appears likely that the “glass ceiling” will continue to be paired with a “glass cliff.”

This post comes to us from professors Charles J. Hadlock  at the University of Pittsburgh, Paul Obermann at Idaho State University, and Joshua R. Pierce at the University of Alabama. It is based on their recent article, “Falling Down Hard: Gender Differences in Top Management Turnover,” available here.