Women and racialized CEOs may outperform their peers because they face tougher barriers to the top

Women remain underrepresented in corporate leadership, even as research finds that those who reach the top often perform strongly. (Unsplash) Every so often, a headline declares that women make better leaders.

A widely cited 2019 Harvard Business Review analysis , for instance, found women outscored men on most leadership competencies.

But if women really do outperform men at the top, what explains the difference? A 2005 review of 46 meta-analyses found relatively few consistent psychological differences between women and men.

That doesn’t rule out differences relevant to leadership.

But it suggests we should look beyond individual traits and consider the selection process itself.

Our recent research published in the Academy of Management Proceedings , and a related working paper , found the performance gap may tell us less about who the CEOs are than about what it took for them to get the job.

Who gets through the leadership filter? Becoming CEO of a major publicly traded company is difficult for anyone.

Women, however, may face additional hurdles along the way , including less access to informal networks, greater scrutiny of their performance and persistent assumptions about their competence and suitability for leadership.

Suppose two groups have similar distributions of ability, but one faces a higher threshold for advancement.

Those who clear the higher threshold will, on average, be more highly selected.

Their stronger performance does not necessarily mean the group had greater ability to begin with.

Rather, it can reflect the demands of the selection process.

Who reaches the executive suite can depend on the standards, networks and opportunities that shape the leadership pipeline. (Unsplash) By the time people become CEOs, they have already passed through years of hiring, promotion and selection decisions.

If those decisions impose different standards on different groups, the people who emerge at the top will reflect those standards.