Remember, activists very often have clever ideas for improving share price performance, though their record of creating lasting value is less clear. While activists can have good or bad ideas, what they almost always represent is a possible threat to the personal fortunes of the CEOs involved.
Female CEOs do worse, personally, out of activist events than their male peers, suffering larger falls in pay, facing more pay-for-performance targets and getting shown the door more often. All of this makes the low number of female CEOs look not just unfair, but bad news for the investors those executives serve.
James Saft is a columnist for Reuters, which provided this article. The opinions expressed are his own.