As recently as last year, drugstore chains were a bright spot for female executives — one of the few sectors in corporate America where women could reach the very top. Rosalind Brewer was CEO of Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc. and at the time of her appointment was the only black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. Karen Lynch ran CVS Health Corp., the largest public company ever run by a woman. Heyward Donigan at Rite Aid Corp. rounded out the trio.
Today, all three are gone. Donigan and Brewer were both shown the door in 2023, and Lynch was ousted last week when CVS announced its board had unanimously decided to fire her after a string of disappointing earnings, repeatedly downgraded forecasts and pressure from investors.
In the wake of their collective departures, it has now become clear that their rise had little to do with the pharmacy industry being particularly inclusive or conscious of promoting and promoting female talent. Instead, each company had an impossible job to do. And impossible jobs often go to women.
It’s a classic glass cutting scenario. A variation of the glass ceiling, this theory claims that women are most likely to get a shot at a big job when a company is in crisis or turnaround. In such cases, company boards are more willing to try a new kind of manager because the one they have (typically a white man) doesn’t train, or because likely male candidates see the job as a minefield they don’t want to touch. Women take the job because they know it may very well be their only chance to run a business. When they struggle or fail, boards have an excuse to return to the management status quo (again: white men).
Despite the scale of what Lynch, Brewer and Donigan were expected to do—transform struggling companies operating in the deeply broken health care sector—they weren’t given much time to do it. All three lasted less than four years in the job, even shorter than the average 4.5-year tenure of female Fortune 500 CEOs, according to research firm Equilar. Meanwhile, the average male Fortune 500 CEO lasts 7.2 years. “There’s not much margin for failure for female CEOs,” Marianne Cooper, a sociologist at Stanford University’s VMware Women’s Leadership Innovation Lab, once told me.
At Walgreens, Brewer wasn’t given full authority to turn around the struggling chain. She and her predecessor, Stefano Pessina, appeared to be at odds over strategy, which wouldn’t have been such a big deal had he not remained executive chairman and one of the company’s largest individual shareholders. He wanted the company to expand through partnerships, not the acquisitions Brewer sought. At the time of her departure, Pessina said the company was looking for a replacement with “deep healthcare experience.” But he knew that wasn’t Brewer’s greatest strength, touting her digital and retail bona fides at the time of her hiring.
Over at CVS, Lynch is frustrated by a plan hatched before her arrival. Her predecessor, Larry Merlo, started CVS’s attempt to transform itself from a struggling retailer into a health care giant with its nearly $70 billion acquisition of Aetna, where Lynch was then president.
Lynch also battled an activist investor who wanted to shake up management. This particular challenge is not so unusual for female CEOs, who are 50% more likely to be targeted by activist investors than their male counterparts. They could be bigger targets because they are more likely to run these struggling companies. Or maybe it’s because activists know that boards are quicker to fire a female CEO. Or maybe it’s just because women are generally scrutinized more.
Case in point: While Lynch was ousted, CVS Chairman Roger Farah, who said last week it was “the right time to make a change,” was promoted; he is now executive chairman and wants to have more of a hand in running the company. That’s despite the fact that we can assume he and the rest of the board signed off on Lynch’s hiring and strategy in the first place.
Of course, Lynch was not blameless in all of this. She made many mistakes. But it’s also important to acknowledge the things that were out of her control — including the glass cliff she faced.