Theresa May stepped in to negotiate and lead a Brexit deal for a referendum she didn’t call for and wasn’t in favour of – the men who had led the country to that point were suddenly nowhere to be found – before she was pushed out and replaced by a white male to get a broadly similar deal over the line.

Marissa Mayer had a short-lived stint as the CEO of Yahoo after the business struggled to find its place in the big tech landscape; Dame Sharon White has had less time as the head of John Lewis and Partners than either of the CEOs before her. Helena Helmersson was forced out of her position as the CEO of the H&M Group at the end of January this year, having taken on the role in January of 2020, just before the global pandemic struck, and we are all waiting to see what the future will hold for Linda Yaccarino, who stepped into the top role at X (formerly Twitter) last year after the business suffered a huge loss of advertisers and a massive blow to its reputation, having been acquired by Elon Musk a year prior.

We’re all familiar with women coming into senior roles when the odds are stacked very firmly against their success from the beginning, and we’ve become used to blaming them for the difficulties they face as they try to turn the tides of struggling enterprises. Even lauded leaders, such as Aviva’s chief executive Amanda Blanc, have been faced with having to overcome these challenging circumstances. Blanc, like Helmersson, stepped into her role during the global crisis of the Covid-19 pandemic – a difficult set of circumstances for any new leadership appointment. Despite the business performing well under her, with Aviva’s market capitalisation being about a third higher than when she joined, she still faced ‘sexist’ and ‘derogatory’ comments during the company’s 2023 AGM, with one shareholder suggesting that “she’s not the man for the job”, another questioning whether or not Blanc should be “wearing trousers”, and a third taking a swipe at board-level women overall, reportedly saying: “They are so good at basic housekeeping activities; I’m sure this will be reflected in the direction of the board in future.”

After the glass ceiling comes the ‘glass cliff’ – here’s how it could harm your career