The "glass cliff" is the phenomenon where struggling companies or organizations often place women in positions of leadership, where they are expected to "rescue" the group they are leading. This pattern disproportionately sets women up for failure, and may rely on essentialist ideas about women's role as "nurturers." The term was coined in 2004 by University of Exeter researchers Michelle K. Ryan and Alex Haslam after examining how companies performed before and after appointing new board members. Ryan and Haslam discovered that companies that appointed women to their boards had generally performed worse in the preceding five months than companies that appointed men to their boards. Their conclusion was that despite the fact that more women are breaking through the glass ceiling, "evidence