The Evolution of the Glass Cliff

There is something deeply human in the urge to condense complex failures into a single face, to point a finger in one direction. Blame has never been equitably distributed, though, going all the way back to the origin of humanity. In the Book of Genesis, in one of the most famous biblical stories of all, Adam and Eve are tricked by a serpent into eating an apple from the Tree of Knowledge, despite God having expressly forbidden them from doing so. Here, Adam and Eve commit the same act. They both eat the fruit of the Tree of Knowledge, and they both disobey God. And yet, for thousands of years, Eve has been a symbol of weakness, temptation, and broad moral failure in a way Adam never has. They may both have been banished from the Garden of Eden, but their respective punishments have otherwise been totally disproportionate. 

In the last twenty or so years, this phenomenon, or at least a version of it, has developed a name: the “glass cliff.” A play on the concept of the “glass ceiling,” the term refers to the tendency for women and other members of minority groups to be elevated into leadership positions during periods of instability or crisis when failure is likely, and the odds are stacked against whoever takes on the role. It was coined in 2005 by psychologists Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam, who identified a pattern among British corporations that appointed women to executive positions immediately after periods of declining stock performance. Unlike the “glass ceiling,” which is centered around the barriers to advancement, the glass cliff focuses on how breaking that barrier can counterintuitively be used as a tool to hold women back. While the appointments appeared progressive, in reality, women in new, high-level roles were handed deteriorating situations just in time to take the blame for them.

Initially, the concept was primarily discussed in terms of hiring, but the modern world requires us to shift our focus. Crises seem like a constant nowadays. The traditional definition of the glass cliff assumes that there are ebbs and flows of stability, and a meaningful distinction between normal times and emergencies. However, the last decade has been a blur of economic struggle, pandemics, wars, political violence, and climate disasters, all unceasingly broadcast by an outrage-driven news cycle. Every leadership position today has arguably been filled during a time of crisis. Therefore, while the matter of appointments during difficult moments is still worth analysis, the more relevant question is who is first to go once public anger demands a sacrifice. 

Looking at the Trump administration, so far, the three highest-profile departures from his cabinet have all been women. Attorney General Pam Bondi and Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem were fired, and Labor Secretary Lori Chavez-DeRemer resigned. 

To be clear, each of these women deserved to lose their jobs, not just due to the cruelty each inflicted as part of Trump’s agenda—actions that were reprehensible but something the President would approve of, not punish—but for their broader incompetence and problematic, self-serving behavior. Bondi, after promising transparency on the Epstein files, oversaw a release process rife with missed deadlines and gratuitous redactions that seemingly served to protect those implicated. Noem spent $220 million on an ad campaign featuring dramatic shots of herself on horseback that profited a consulting firm with which she has significant personal ties. Chavez-DeRemer stepped down amid an investigation into allegations of significant misconduct, including excessive drinking, mistreatment of her staff, and misuse of funds. 

These three women acted poorly, to say the least, and I shed no tears over their departures, but they are far from the only dangerous or incompetent officials in the administration. Multiple male members of Trump’s cabinet have engaged in conduct on par with or worse than that of Bondi, Noem, and Chavez-DeRemer. None of them has faced meaningful accountability. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth accidentally added a journalist to an unsecured Signal chat containing highly sensitive information about military strikes in Yemen and has been accused of sexual assault. FBI Director Kash Patel has been reported to engage in excessive alcohol consumption and use resources funded by taxpayer dollars for personal purposes. Robert F. Kennedy Jr., the Secretary of Health and Human Services, has a history of bizarre animal encounters, including cutting the penis off a dead raccoon and dumping a bear carcass in Central Park. He has also cancelled grants and cut hundreds of millions of dollars of funding for vaccine and cancer research. The list goes on. All of these men remain in Trump’s cabinet. 

The glass cliff can be difficult to talk about, as the line between analysis and exoneration is easily blurred. Bondi, Noem, and Chavez-DeRemer are all women with agency who chose to engage in horrific, harmful behavior. Ignoring that strips them of autonomy while allowing them to avoid accountability. However, each of them is a symptom of the growing problem of intolerance, violence, and corruption in this country, not the cause. Bondi’s firing has not spurred a string of arrests of powerful men in the Epstein Files or any level of further transparency on the matter. ICE has not slowed down its rampage or become less violent and indiscriminate in its arrests since Noem was replaced. It is also worth noting that Bondi, Noem, and Chavez-DeRemer were all succeeded by men. All their firings did was leverage society’s existing misogyny to ensure we stopped talking about the systems and people who enabled or instructed them. 

This is what makes the glass cliff so dangerous. It is why, thousands of years later, we still talk about Eve and not Adam, or the snake, or any of the other structural absurdities of the story. Minority groups who are already in a vulnerable position are set up as targets that shield institutions from ever having to enact meaningful change. As a result, we must avoid falling into the trap of treating these groups as the problem rather than recognizing them as a small, conveniently visible sampling of perpetrators.