Part III - Breaking the Stained Glass Ceiling: Gender and Succession
In our exploration of the papal conclave as a lens for understanding succession planning, we've already examined its structural elements and political dynamics. But we cannot avoid discussing its most obvious and problematic feature: the complete absence of women from the process.
The conclave represents perhaps the world's most extreme example of gender exclusion in succession planning. No woman has ever cast a vote in a papal election. No woman has ever been considered as a candidate. No woman has ever been present in the room where it happens.
This isn't just an interesting historical quirk, it's a dangerous and harmful. It also lets us into the reality of uncomfortable truths about succession planning in organizations far beyond the Vatican.
When Half the Sky Is Invisible
The papal conclave isn't merely male-dominated; it's exclusively male by explicit design. This absolute exclusion eliminates half of humanity from both the selection process and the leadership pool itself.
Most organizations don't formally exclude women from succession consideration. We've moved beyond explicit barriers in most sectors. But the statistics tell a story of continued imbalance:
Women hold only 26% of CEO positions in nonprofit orgs with budgets over $50M
Less than 9% of Fortune 500 companies have female CEOs
Only 15% of major sports teams have women in top executive positions
Just 24 countries currently have women serving as heads of state or government
These disparities don't happen by accident. They result from succession systems that, while not explicitly excluding women like the conclave does, nevertheless produce similar outcomes through more subtle mechanisms.
The Glass Cliff: When Women Finally Get Their Turn
An especially troubling pattern emerges when we examine when women do succeed to leadership positions: they're disproportionately selected during periods of crisis.
Researchers Michelle Ryan and Alex Haslam identified this "glass cliff" phenomenon – women are more likely than men to be appointed to leadership positions during periods of organizational decline or crisis. When organizations are stable and successful, men typically get the top jobs. When they're failing and risky, suddenly women's leadership becomes attractive.
We've witnessed this repeatedly across sectors:
Marissa Mayer became Yahoo's CEO only after the company had lost significant market share and was flailing for direction. Theresa May became British Prime Minister immediately after the Brexit referendum created unprecedented political chaos. General Motors appointed Mary Barra as CEO while the company was navigating a massive recall crisis.
This pattern reveals something disturbing about gendered succession planning: organizations often turn to women only when traditional (male) leadership has failed and risk is highest. Then, when these women struggle to reverse longstanding problems they inherited, their difficulties are attributed to gender rather than circumstance.
The contrast with the papal succession system is striking. The papacy is never framed as a "glass cliff" position. New popes inherit an institution with challenges, certainly, but the position maintains its prestige and authority regardless of circumstance. The succession system insulates the role from the dynamics that create glass cliffs for women leaders elsewhere.
Different Standards: Competence vs. Likability
Another gendered dynamic that shapes succession outcomes involves the different evaluation standards applied to male and female candidates.
Research consistently shows that we evaluate male leaders primarily on perceived competence, while female leaders must demonstrate both competence and likability – a double standard that creates what researchers call the "competence/likability trade-off."
Women who demonstrate strong competence are often perceived as less likable, while those who emphasize interpersonal warmth may have their competence questioned. Men rarely face this same trade-off, with competence and likability treated as independent qualities rather than competing attributes.
In succession planning, this creates a hidden filter that disadvantages female candidates. A woman described as "brilliant but difficult" faces succession headwinds that a man with identical attributes doesn't encounter. A woman perceived as "compassionate and collaborative" may have her strategic capacity questioned in ways a similarly collaborative man wouldn't experience.
The all-male conclave avoids this entirely. Cardinals evaluate each other's theological positions, political alignments, and leadership capacities without gender-based double standards complicating the assessment.
The Mentorship Gap and Succession Pipelines
Perhaps the most significant factor shaping gendered succession outcomes involves mentorship and sponsorship – the informal relationships that prepare potential successors for leadership.
The conclave emerges from a system where mentorship follows exclusively male pathways. Senior cardinals mentor junior ones. Popes elevate promising bishops. Male leaders identify and develop male successors through clearly established channels.
Most organizations lack similarly clear mentorship pathways, but informal sponsorship relationships nevertheless shape who enters succession pipelines. And these relationships disproportionately form between senior leaders and junior professionals who share demographic characteristics – creating what researchers call "homosocial reproduction."
A 2019 LeanIn.Org survey found that 60% of male managers were uncomfortable mentoring women, participating in one-on-one meetings with them, or socializing with them. This discomfort creates a profound mentorship gap that directly impacts who gets developed for succession consideration.
I've witnessed this dynamic repeatedly in nonprofit settings: male executive directors comfortably mentoring promising young men while maintaining more distant, formal relationships with equally promising women. The men receive stretch assignments, strategic advice, and informal sponsorship that positions them for succession consideration. The women receive performance feedback without the same developmental investment.
This mentorship gap doesn't just affect individual careers – it shapes the entire succession landscape, determining who's perceived as "ready" when transitions occur.
When Women Do Succeed: The Founder's Daughter Effect
When women do overcome these barriers and succeed to leadership positions, they often do so through what might be called the "founder's daughter effect" – gaining legitimacy through association with powerful men rather than through independent recognition.
In family businesses, literal daughters often succeed fathers when sons aren't available or interested. In politics, wives and daughters of male leaders frequently follow them into office. In nonprofits, women closely associated with male founders sometimes succeed them, carrying forward the founder's legacy by proxy.
This pattern reveals something important about gendered succession: women's leadership often becomes acceptable when it's framed as an extension of male authority rather than an independent claim to power.
The contrast with the papal succession system is again revealing. The papacy isn't conceptualized as anyone's inheritance. Each pope establishes independent legitimacy rather than serving as a proxy for predecessors. This creates a succession model based on institutional authority rather than relational legitimacy – a model that, ironically, might benefit women leaders if it weren't explicitly closed to them.
The Double Bind of "Feminine" Leadership Traits
Succession discussions often invoke leadership traits stereotypically coded as "masculine" or "feminine" – creating another double bind for women candidates.
Traits like decisiveness, assertiveness, and strategic vision are typically coded as masculine, while collaboration, empathy, and relationship-building are coded as feminine. This creates an impossible situation for women in succession planning:
If they demonstrate stereotypically "masculine" leadership traits, they may face backlash for violating gender norms
If they lead in ways coded as "feminine," they may be seen as lacking traditional leadership capacity
If they balance both sets of traits, they may be perceived as inconsistent rather than well-rounded
Men face no such double bind. A male leader can be collaborative and empathetic without having his decisiveness questioned (and is often celebrated for his compassion). He can be assertive and strategic without concerns about his interpersonal capacity.
The conclave's all-male composition eliminates this particular dynamic. Cardinals can demonstrate both traditionally "masculine" and "feminine" leadership qualities without gender-based evaluation biases clouding the assessment.
Breaking the Pattern: Organizations That Get It Right
Despite these persistent challenges, some organizations have created succession systems that effectively advance gender equity in leadership. Their approaches offer valuable lessons:
Explicit succession planning with clear gender equity goals Organizations that name gender balance as a specific succession priority and measure progress against that goal consistently outperform those with vague diversity commitments.
Development of robust internal pipelines Companies like IBM and Xerox that invested in developing female talent internally for decades have achieved more balanced leadership succession than those relying primarily on external recruitment.
Formal mentorship and sponsorship programs Organizations that create structured mentorship programs rather than relying on informal relationships show significantly better gender balance in succession outcomes.
Evaluation criteria that minimize gender bias Succession processes that use clearly defined, consistent criteria applied equally to all candidates reduce the impact of implicit bias on selection decisions.
Diverse decision-making bodies Organizations where succession decisions involve diverse stakeholders consistently select more diverse leaders than those where homogeneous groups control the process.
The contrast with the conclave is stark. The papal succession system structurally excludes women from both the candidate pool and the selection process, creating a self-perpetuating cycle of male leadership. Organizations committed to gender equity in succession must take exactly the opposite approach – deliberately including women in every aspect of succession planning.
Beyond Binary Thinking: Gender Identity in Succession
Our discussion of gender and succession thus far has focused primarily on the inclusion of women in processes dominated by men. But contemporary understanding of gender extends well beyond this binary framework, raising important questions about succession planning for non-binary, transgender, and gender-nonconforming leaders.
Most succession systems – like the conclave – remain deeply rooted in binary gender assumptions. They may seek to balance "men" and "women" without creating space for leaders whose gender identities don't fit these categories. They may track binary gender statistics without capturing the experiences of transgender leaders. They may use gendered language that excludes non-binary perspectives from succession conversations entirely.
Organizations committed to truly inclusive succession planning must move beyond binary thinking about gender. This means:
Using gender-inclusive language in succession planning documents
Creating data collection systems that accurately capture diverse gender identities
Examining succession criteria for assumptions based on binary gender norms
Ensuring succession committees include diverse gender perspectives
Addressing unique barriers faced by transgender and non-binary leaders
The conclave, with its absolute gender binary, offers no guidance here. Organizations seeking gender-inclusive succession models must look elsewhere for examples of truly expansive approaches to leadership development and transition.
The Question We Can No Longer Avoid
The papal conclave forces us to confront a question that extends far beyond Vatican City: What do we lose when we exclude or marginalize women in succession planning?
We lose half the available leadership talent. We lose diverse perspectives on organizational challenges. We lose leadership styles that might complement or improve upon existing approaches. We lose the full creative capacity of our institutions.
But we lose something even more fundamental: we lose legitimacy. In a world where women represent half of humanity, succession systems that exclude or marginalize them increasingly appear as anachronistic as they actually are.
The conclave maintains its legitimacy within a specific theological framework that justifies male-only leadership. Most organizations enjoy no such justification. Their gender-imbalanced succession outcomes result not from explicit doctrine but from implicit biases, structural barriers, and unexamined assumptions.
As we continue to use the conclave as a lens for understanding succession planning, its exclusion of women serves as both caution and challenge. The caution: even well-structured succession systems produce deeply flawed outcomes when they exclude essential perspectives. The challenge: to create succession processes that maintain the conclave's procedural wisdom while rejecting its categorical limitations.
In our next article, we'll explore another critical dimension of succession planning often overlooked in conventional approaches: the crucial process of knowledge transfer between departing and incoming leaders.
This is the third article in a six-part series examining succession planning through the lens of the papal conclave process. Part I and Part II. Up next: "Passing the Fisherman's Ring: Knowledge Transfer in Leadership Transitions” focused on knowledge transfer mechanisms between departing and incoming leaders, with a discussion on the balance between clean breaks and continuity. We will also draw insights from the movie "The Two Popes" on relationship dynamics, and explore methods for preserving institutional memory during transitions, including formal vs. informal knowledge transfer mechanisms.