Fyre Festival founder, fresh from prison for fraud, gets second shot

Men can go to prison for fraud then get a second chance. Women are lucky to get one shot at the top.

What you probably already know: Billy McFarland went to prison for fraud only a few years ago after his Fyre Festival duped investors and attendees. Now, he’s getting a chance to do it again. McFarland is a little more than a year into the revamped Fyre Festival II and is again saying he’s presold tickets. He’s just the latest man who failed spectacularly and was given a second chance to do the exact same thing. WeWork’s Adam Neumann was able to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to buy back his company after he was ousted for his cult-like leadership style and inability to turn around the struggling real estate company.

Why? So, why do men get second chances when women teeter on glass cliffs? The glass cliff effect describes the leadership roles that women often find themselves in, stepping into struggling companies or government positions when there’s a crisis and a high chance of failure. And when they fail, the blame lands squarely on their shoulders. Women rarely get a second chance to prove themselves.

What it means: While men can go to prison for fraud, get out, and still raise money for the exact thing they went to prison for in the first place, women struggle to raise money at all. Data from the Reykjavik Index for Leadership recently showed that trust in women leaders has fallen significantly in recent years. The percentage of people who said they were very comfortable with a woman heading up their government dropped seven percentage points to only 45%.

What happens now? There’s much on the line as women step into high profile leadership roles across the globe. Mexico recently elected its first-ever woman president, Claudia Sheinbaum, and several struggling Fortune 500 companies have women CEOs at the top, including Karen Lynch, CEO of CVS. Then there’s Roz Brewer, CEO of Walgreens, who was pushed out after attempting a turnaround there. As the U.S. goes to the polls in November, voters will be asked to consider whether they trust a woman to lead their country, or if they should go with someone who has been convicted of multiple crimes. While that may seem like a stark comparison, history should teach us that bad behavior just won’t stick to male leaders.

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