The Edge of Power: The Glass Cliff Theory and the Women of the Trump Administration
- Ash A Milton
- 1 day ago
- 8 min read
There is a concept in organizational psychology that most people have never heard of — but once you understand it, you begin to see it everywhere.
It is called the glass cliff.
You are likely familiar with the glass ceiling: the invisible but durable barrier that has historically blocked women and minorities from reaching the upper echelons of leadership. The glass cliff takes that metaphor one step further. It describes the phenomenon in which women — and other historically marginalized groups — are more likely to be elevated to leadership positions when an organization is in crisis, when failure is probable, and when the role itself is most precarious.
In other words: they finally get the keys when the car is already headed off the road.
The Theory, Explained
The term was coined in 2005 by British psychologists Michelle K. Ryan and Alexander Haslam at the University of Exeter. Their original research examined the performance of FTSE 100 companies before and after the appointment of new board members. What they found was striking: companies that appointed women to their boards were more likely to have experienced sustained poor financial performance in the months preceding that appointment. Women weren't causing the decline, as some at the time crudely suggested. They were being handed the wheel after the decline had already begun.
The glass cliff, as Ryan and Haslam explained it, refers to a danger that is real but not readily visible — much like glass itself. Women may break through the ceiling and ascend to positions of formal authority, only to find themselves on a ledge, exposed to the very high probability of failure, with the ground far below.
Subsequent research expanded the concept beyond the corporate boardroom. Scholars found the pattern repeated across Fortune 500 companies, federal government agencies, academic institutions, and political campaigns. A landmark study by Alison Cook and Christy Glass published in the Strategic Management Journal confirmed that both white women and men and women of color were significantly more likely than white men to be promoted to CEO at weakly performing firms.
When those firms then declined further during their tenure, these leaders were more likely to be replaced — often by a white man, a dynamic the researchers coined "the savior effect."
The glass cliff is not merely a theoretical curiosity. Its real-world examples are abundant and telling. Marissa Mayer took over Yahoo in 2012 as the company was in dramatic decline. Mary Barra became CEO of General Motors in 2014, stepping directly into the middle of a devastating safety recall scandal. In the United Kingdom, Theresa May assumed the prime ministership in 2016 — the poisoned chalice of Brexit negotiations handed to her after David Cameron's abrupt departure. More recently, Linda Yaccarino became CEO of X Corp, formerly Twitter, taking the helm of a company hemorrhaging advertisers and mired in controversy.
Each of these women was "given" power at a moment when any leader would have struggled. The question the glass cliff asks is: why are women so consistently chosen for those moments?
Researchers point to several intertwined dynamics. In times of crisis, organizations often seek leaders who project communal traits — warmth, empathy, a perceived ability to stabilize human relationships. These are traits that are stereotypically associated with women, making women appear to be a "natural fit" for damage control. There is also the signal value: appointing a woman signals change, a break from the status quo, an acknowledgment that something has to be different. Women become markers of disruption rather than recipients of earned authority. And critically, because the same structural and cultural biases that created the glass ceiling are still very much present, women may feel compelled to accept these precarious opportunities because better ones are not offered.
The glass cliff is, at its core, a subtle and systemic form of discrimination. It extends opportunity while quietly engineering failure.
A New Political Chapter — With Old Patterns
When Donald Trump returned to the White House in January 2025, one of the early headlines was notably different from what many had anticipated: the new administration included more women in Cabinet-level positions than any Republican presidency in history. Eight of the 24 Cabinet and Cabinet-level appointments went to women. Susie Wiles became the first woman ever to serve as White House Chief of Staff. Pamela Bondi was named Attorney General. Tulsi Gabbard assumed the role of Director of National Intelligence. Kristi Noem took over the Department of Homeland Security. Kelly Loeffler was appointed to lead the Small Business Administration. Linda McMahon became Secretary of Education. Brooke Rollins was named Secretary of Agriculture. Elise Stefanik was appointed Ambassador to the United Nations.
The appointments were celebrated in some quarters as proof of the administration's commitment to diversity, even as the same administration moved aggressively to dismantle federal DEI programs. The contrast drew immediate attention. But the glass cliff framework asks us to look not just at who was appointed, but what they were appointed to — and under what conditions.
Reading the Appointments Through a Glass Cliff Lens
It would be an oversimplification to apply the glass cliff theory uniformly to every woman in the Trump Cabinet. Some appointments, like Susie Wiles, appear to defy the model. Wiles is widely regarded as one of the most strategically competent operatives in modern Republican politics, having managed the 2024 campaign to a decisive victory. Her appointment as Chief of Staff reflected demonstrated loyalty and operational excellence. She has remained perhaps the most stable and protected figure in the administration, named to Forbes' 2025 list of the World's Most Powerful Women.
But other appointments invite more searching questions.
Kristi Noem was given one of the most combustible portfolios in the administration: the Department of Homeland Security, charged with executing the most aggressive immigration enforcement agenda in modern American history. DHS was already a structurally battered department — during Trump's first term alone, it cycled through five secretaries, three of them in acting capacities. Noem stepped into a role that would require her to defend policies generating intense legal challenges, international scrutiny, and public controversy on a near-daily basis. By late 2025, CNN was reporting that sources within the administration were discussing potential cabinet reshuffling, with DHS specifically mentioned as a department that could see change. Noem remained in her position, and the White House denied imminent shake-ups — but the speculation itself was telling.
Tulsi Gabbard arrived at the Office of the Director of National Intelligence with no prior experience in intelligence. She took over the coordination of 17 intelligence organizations at a time when the intelligence community itself was under deep internal stress — facing personnel purges, political pressure, and structural changes. Her tenure has not been without turbulence: she was among the officials added to a Signal group chat that inadvertently included a journalist and exposed sensitive military planning, a controversy that generated significant institutional damage. Reports also emerged that Trump grew annoyed with Gabbard over her assessments of Iran's nuclear capability. She has remained in her role, but she has navigated genuine institutional fragility from the outset.
Pamela Bondi was appointed Attorney General after Trump's first choice, Matt Gaetz, withdrew following a congressional ethics investigation. She stepped into a Justice Department that was already polarized and facing intense scrutiny over its role in election-related matters and ongoing legal battles tied to the administration. She has become one of the more publicly visible — and publicly contested — figures in the administration, facing criticism from across the political spectrum.
Linda McMahon was placed at the helm of an Education Department that the administration had publicly stated it wished to eliminate. That is not a metaphor — it is a stated policy goal. Leading an agency that your own administration is trying to dissolve is, almost by definition, a glass cliff appointment: there is no version of success that does not involve managing an institutional extinction event.
The Contrast with Previous Administrations
The glass cliff framework gains additional texture when viewed against the backdrop of how women have historically been deployed in presidential administrations.
Prior administrations — Democratic and Republican alike — have had their own gender dynamics. Janet Napolitano ran a DHS under Obama that faced significant immigration pressures. Condoleezza Rice served as both National Security Advisor and Secretary of State during two terms of the Bush administration, including the post-9/11 period and the Iraq War — unambiguously high-stakes circumstances. Hillary Clinton served as Secretary of State during a period of profound geopolitical instability.
But the sheer concentration of women in specifically turbulent, structurally embattled, or politically exposed portfolios in the current administration is notable. The DEI rollback provides important context: in an administration that has explicitly framed diversity programs as counterproductive, the simultaneous appointment of record numbers of women to Cabinet positions creates a distinctive tension.
The women appointed are not beneficiaries of the policies being dismantled — they are, in many cases, their opponents. What the appointments do offer the administration is a symbolic shield: a visible diversity that coexists with the dismantling of the institutional infrastructure meant to produce it.
This is precisely the dynamic that researchers have identified as one driver of glass cliff appointments: the use of diverse leadership as a signal of change, a marker of institutional reinvention, without the underlying structural commitment to equity that would make those positions genuinely sustainable.
The Double Bind
There is another dimension to the glass cliff that deserves attention: the double bind it creates for the women who find themselves on it.
If they lean into stereotypically feminine leadership traits — collaborative, relationship-centered, communicative — they risk being seen as soft or ineffective in high-stakes portfolios. If they adopt harder-edged, more traditionally "masculine" leadership styles — as several of these women have demonstrably done — they draw criticism for being harsh, ruthless, or performatively aggressive. Either direction comes with a cost that their male counterparts rarely bear in the same way.
Several of the women in this administration have faced this bind publicly. Noem's performance at the border and in immigration enforcement has made her both a lightning rod for critics on the left and occasionally a subject of internal administration scrutiny. Gabbard's intelligence assessments have been publicly questioned by her own principal. Bondi has been publicly rebuked — in a Vanity Fair profile no less — by her own colleague Susie Wiles, who said Bondi "completely whiffed" on the Epstein files. These are not simply workplace tensions. They are the specific texture of the glass cliff: visibility without protection, authority without institutional backing.
Not a Verdict — A Question
It is important to be clear about what the glass cliff theory is, and what it is not. It is not a statement about the competence of the women involved. Many of the women in the current administration are accomplished, experienced, and politically formidable. It is not a claim that their appointments were cynically engineered. The glass cliff often operates through unconscious bias, organizational inertia, and systemic patterns that no single decision-maker consciously designs.
What the glass cliff offers is a lens — a way of examining not just who is in the room, but the structural conditions into which they are placed. It asks us to look past the headline diversity numbers and ask harder questions: Are these women being given the resources, institutional support, and political backing they need to succeed? Are their portfolios designed for impact, or for endurance? When things go wrong — as they often do in any administration — who will be the first to absorb the consequences?
The glass cliff does not deny women's agency or resilience. It simply insists that we pay attention to the terrain.
In a country that is still debating what it means for women to lead, in an administration that is simultaneously elevating and constraining the possibilities for women in public life, those questions are not academic. They are urgent.
The glass ceiling was the barrier. The glass cliff is what waits on the other side.
Asha Hamilton Universe explores culture, power, and the stories that shape how we live. Read more at ashamiltonuniverse.com.
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