When Helena Helmersson abruptly stepped down as CEO of H&M Hennes & Mauritz last month, the few words she offered to explain her decision were picked over and examined like a sales rack at the fast-fashion retailer. Was she disillusioned? Burned out? Pressured to leave?
CEO departures always attract attention, of course, but when a woman in charge of a global company calls it quits, the ensuing curiosity has an edge. Women run only 7% of Fortune 500 Europe companies like H&M and 10.4% of Fortune 500 companies. Advocates for gender equity don’t want to see any slippage in those hard-won figures.
Helmersson also left four years into the job, meaning her tenure was less than half that of her male predecessor, Karl-Johan Persson, who held the reins for 10 years. Whether she left because of personal reasons or was nudged out for missing profit targets, Helmersson’s resignation fits a pattern: The average term for women CEOs in the Fortune 500 is significantly shorter than men’s and has been for the past decade, with the gap diminishing only slightly in recent years.
As shown in the chart above, in 2023, male Fortune 500 CEOs ran their firms for an average of 7.2 years, while the average tenure for women was 4.5 years, according to data from Equilar shared exclusively with Fortune. (The median tenures, not shown, were five years for men and 3.8 years for women.)
These figures confirm the suspicions of women in corporate America who have long watched men magically fail upward while women seem to be given less leeway to make mistakes. But sexism alone may not explain the stubborn gender tenure gap.
A broken path to CEO
To be sure, women who run Fortune 500 companies represent a small sample of our data, and it’s possible that the gap would shrink if an equal share of men and women were in charge of the largest U.S. firms. However, Fortune’s findings also align with those of a 2022 analysis of Russell 3000 companies that found male CEOs hold on to their jobs for 9.9 years while women last 6.6 years, as Bloomberg reported. Similarly, Russell Reynolds Associates published a study in November analyzing data from companies listed on 12 stock exchanges, including the S&P 500 and the FTSE 100. It found women’s chief executive stints were roughly three years shorter than men’s.
Russell Reynolds consultants say that no single factor explains the global and persistent gender tenure gap but point to the glass cliff phenomenon as one of the most pervasive problems weighing on women’s success. Several studies have shown that women and individuals from minority groups are too often put into leadership roles when a company is in decline, stacking the odds against them before they start the job.
Academics reason that companies repeatedly turn to women in tough times because they need a visible sign of change at the top; plus, women are regarded as democratic, healing fixers. In reality, when more women CEOs are positioned to fail, they do, dragging down the average tenure.
By contrast, many male CEOs have demonstrated gravity-defying survival skills. Recent examples of men who continued to tread water despite poor financial performance include Peloton’s founder and former CEO John Foley and, for similar reasons, Adam Neumann, the infamous founder of WeWork. (Let’s not forget that despite his sensational flop, Neumann was able to raise $350 million for his second-act startup, Flow.)
At Gap, former CEO Art Peck was given five years to turn the retailer around; his successor, Sonia Syngal, a South Asian woman who grew up in Canada, was shown the door in half that time. Indeed, women of color, particularly Black women, are doubly at risk of glass cliff pressures. Roz Brewer, one of the few Black women CEOs in the Fortune 500 when she led Walgreens Boots Alliance, held that role for less than three years, departing in 2023. She took over from billionaire Stefano Pessina, who was CEO for six years and became executive chairman upon stepping down.
Rusty O’Kelley, head of board and CEO advisory partners for Russell Reynolds Associates, says that while the glass cliff is a “common issue,” another corporate tendency could explain why men have longer CEO tenures. The boards of high-performing companies usually have well-managed succession plans that center on internal candidates, he tells Fortune. And CEOs who are promoted from within have longer terms, considering they’re typically taking over in a period of stability or growth rather than following a predecessor’s botched job. The catch for women is that men dominate positions seen as internal stepping stones to the corner office, including CFO and COO jobs and senior roles that involve managing profits and losses and growing the company’s business. Women are more likely to hold C-suite jobs in communications, human resources, or as general counsel, which rarely propel someone into the chief role. The problem here sits at “a very particular part of the pipeline,” says O’Kelley.
Activist investors also disproportionately target companies run by women CEOs and may be partially to blame for their shorter tenures. Two years ago, the activist hedge fund Ancora Holdings set its sights on Kohl’s then-CEO Michelle Gass. She had inherited a department store chain that had lagged competitors in e-commerce development and other areas under the 10-year tenure of the previous CEO, Kevin Mansell. After four years running the retailer, Gass departed in 2022 and is now CEO of Levi’s, which is not a Fortune 500 company.
Even if women never hear from an activist investor, they are still exposed to harsher judgment. Isabel Fernandez-Mateo, professor of strategy and entrepreneurship at London Business School, tells Fortune that something as simple as how companies announce female CEO appointments can affect leaders’ success and longevity. Researchers at Penn State found that when company press releases play up women appointees with glowing terms, they have shorter tenures compared with those introduced with less fanfare. Big, splashy announcements may leave women CEOs more susceptible to stereotyping and undue attention, the paper’s authors surmise.
Others argue that companies just don’t give women the same benefit of the doubt they give men. Amanda Rajkumar, a longtime HR professional who was most recently head of global human resources at Adidas and the sole woman on the company’s executive board, says women who lead organizations are routinely undermined, whether they’re left out of conversations or treated as outsiders crashing a private club. “In my experience, there are so many devious ways of bringing senior females down.” Many women facing relentless sexism cut their losses and quit.
Another key consideration is that women are finally scoring more CEO titles as the corner office job becomes increasingly taxing. The demands of a role now known to shorten one’s life may push some women to step down voluntarily, says Jocelyn Mangan, founder and CEO of Him for Her, a networking and training group that advocates for diversity on corporate boards.
She isn’t suggesting that women aren’t built for the constant stress, travel, and grueling hours. But the reality is that many also have families, and running a company is logically more challenging for women saddled with a greater share of caregiving responsibilities.
Equal opportunity up top
When asked what it would take for women to catch up with men’s tenures, Fernandez-Mateo of London Business School says the real question is whether men and women are operating on a level playing field. Are they judged fairly, or does gender color the way they’re evaluated? It would be wrong to assume that men’s tenures are the gold standard and that women should be striving to emulate them, she tells Fortune. It’s possible the gender tenure gap results from companies not acting quickly enough to yank men out of the CEO job.
Fernandez-Mateo urges boards to give both men and women an appropriate but fair amount of time in the role. In the same way companies should not eject female CEOs before they’ve had a chance to prove themselves, boards should not coddle men for too long. When a male CEO appears to be drifting astray, Fernandez-Mateo advises asking, “If these same leadership behaviors or strategic actions were taken by a member of the minority versus not, or by a woman versus a man, would we react to them in the same way?”
O’Kelley encourages boards to develop a deep well of diverse internal talent, particularly for roles that position candidates as corner office contenders.
While Mangan agrees that the onus is on boards to support rising women leaders, she also floats a more out-of-the-box idea. If it turns out that leading a major company takes an especially punishing toll on women, more companies—and female executives—could consider the co-CEO model, allowing women to share the burden of a job that wasn’t constructed with their unique needs and experiences in mind.
Taking such steps to close the gender tenure gap would also chip away at another destructive side effect of female CEO departures: Every time a woman “fails” as a chief executive, the competency of all women leaders is questioned. Yet male leadership writ large is not implicated when a man is sent packing.
As Francesca Manzi, an assistant professor of management at the London School of Economics, told Fortune in 2022, women are still expected to be gender ambassadors. “You’re put in a role where you actually have to steer this huge company,” she said, “and then on top of that, you have to convince people that not only you, but other women, can do it.”
Do you have insight to share? Got a tip? Contact Lila MacLellan at lila.maclellan@fortune.com or through secure messaging app Signal at 646-820-9525.
