Good morning, Broadsheet readers! General Motors exceeded earnings expectations for Q1, 41% of male student-athletes are unaware of their school's policies and procedures for sexual violence, and Bed Bath & Beyond's CEO took a job on a glass cliff. Happy Wednesday.
- Beyond saving. Over the weekend, Bed Bath & Beyond filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The filing was the next step in the demise of the once-beloved home goods chain—and repeated a pattern typical for a certain category of female CEO.
Sue Gove became interim CEO of Bed Bath & Beyond last June and claimed the job on a permanent basis in October. A board member since 2019, she stepped in after the departure of CEO Mark Tritton, who held the job between 2019 and 2022, a period during which the company's stock fell almost 50%.
Gove had spent the years before her Bed Bath appointment as a board member and adviser at companies like Logitech and AutoZone, according to her LinkedIn; before that, she spent 25 years at the jewelry retailer Zales.
Her Bed Bath tenure started with a turnaround plan. The company announced a restructuring in August and planned to shutter 150 stores. But that wasn't enough. The store closures continued, the share price sank to below $1 after a brief spell as a meme stock, and the retailer will now "wind down" operations and sell off its assets.
Gove's CEO appointment is a classic example of the so-called glass cliff, the phenomenon in which a female executive is only given the top job in an impossible situation—whether that's a time of crisis or when failure is all but certain. Women are seen as the right choice to clean up a mess, but not to lead when times are good. Other examples include Marissa Mayer's tenure at Yahoo, Jill Soltau's time overseeing the collapse of J.C. Penney, Peggy Johnson at Magic Leap, and Heyward Donigan at Rite Aid.
The end of Bed Bath & Beyond as we know it is a sad moment for coupon-clippers and college dorm shoppers. So too, it's an unfortunate turn of events for those who follow gender diversity among Fortune 500 companies, where women hold 10% of CEO jobs. Retail has traditionally been a sector that has boosted female execs to the top job, but from Bed Bath & Beyond to Gap Inc., those ranks are dwindling.
A risk of the glass cliff is that people begin to believe, consciously or not, that women are less capable leaders after seeing the companies they lead fail. One consolation in this case? Bed Bath's demise was so dramatic and drawn out that few are blaming Gove for the company's fate; ultimately, Bed Bath & Beyond proved beyond saving.
Emma Hinchliffe
emma.hinchliffe@fortune.com
@_emmahinchliffe
The Broadsheet is Fortune's newsletter for and about the world's most powerful women. Today's edition was curated by Kinsey Crowley. Subscribe here.
