The research is clear — and yet the structures remain. If there is only one woman in your candidate pool, there is statistically no chance she will be hired. One. The deviance from the norm becomes the thing that disqualifies her — not her capabilities, not her vision, not her track record. Her difference.
"Why does being the only woman in a pool of finalists matter? It highlights how different she is from the norm. And deviating from the norm can be risky for decision makers — people tend to ostracise those who are different from the group. For women and minorities, having your differences made salient can also lead to inferences of incompetence." — Johnson, Hekman & Chan
If she does make it to the C-suite, does she then face the glass cliff — in moments of crisis — after having already faced the glass ceiling on her way up? As Michelle Ryan describes it — in a phenomenon explored by the Harvard Business Review in How Women End Up on the Glass Cliff — women and minorities are disproportionately offered leadership precisely when the organisation is already in trouble, the role is precarious, and being seen to be inclusive has suddenly become strategically convenient.
The invisible voices are not absent because they have nothing to say. They are absent because the structures have not been designed to hear them. Changing that is not a diversity initiative. It is a strategic imperative — and the foundation of any institution that wants to be genuinely antifragile.