II. Climbing a Straight Ladder
Straight men dominate the corporate world. As of 2024, openly LGBTQ+ individuals held only 39 out of 5,400 board seats in the Fortune 500, representing a mere 0.7 percent of board members, and 0.78 percent of companies. Of these, sixteen identify as women, four as Black, one as Asian, and five as Hispanic. To understand how LGBTQ+ people fit into the corporate hierarchy, we first have to summarize how this rarified world functions. From the supply side of the elite labor market, a typical corporate trajectory for an aspiring leader involves attending a top tier graduate school, entering a large firm’s management training or consulting program, and finally moving up the corporate hierarchy to middle and then upper management. Then one might take over as the executive of a key division of a firm before finding a spot in the C-Suite, as gaining profit and loss responsibility puts them in the spotlight for potential leadership positions.
From the demand side, as firms’ boards seek people to fill officer positions, they focus on notions of expertise, skills, and fit. Skills involved in running a large firm include basic managerial competence, such as understanding how markets work, how the firm fits into the market, numerical literacy, and a related ability to quickly perform multivariant cost-benefit analyses. Communication skills and decisiveness figure prominently as well. Risk-taking, although limited to being within a very circumscribed framework, is also prized.
Let us imagine how this might look differently for an LGBTQ+ person. Who we'll call “Q.” Q ticks all the boxes for climbing the corporate ladder. But here and there, colleagues who are straight may get invites for social engagements with senior people in the firm. It may be playing a game of golf or attending a sporting event. While of course there are LGBTQ+ individuals who enjoy these activities, they often occur in male-dominated spaces. In such places, one fits in best by being “one of the guys.” This pressure, to be clear, is faced not only by LGBTQ+ but also, in different ways, by women. Men also sometimes do not enjoy typically male pastimes. However, the guys who hang out with the higher-ups hear about work opportunities, such as new projects or new clients. They are more likely to get those assignments as well as the inside scoop on how to get ahead.
Q feels left out by this scheme. Somehow, they must play straight to fit in. To seem legitimately capable of serving in management, they must follow straight norms, as the firm’s leaders expect people to engage with them both within and outside the firm. This conformity, the homogeneity incentive, reflects how male leaders frame leadership in ways that reflect their own norms. Women confront this phenomenon, and LGBTQ+ people face involves a similar process of gendered othering. One must “fit” into straight norms. Part of the challenge here is this level of corporate practice eludes the coverage of Title VII and its norms, mainly because of the harsh penalty of permanent exclusion, or blackballing.
The above hypothetical demonstrates why heterosexuals (and heterosexual men in particular) dominate upper management in terms of sheer numbers, both absolute and relative to their percentage in the overall population. This hypothetical also reveals something more sinister about corporate governance and corporate leadership—namely, the fact that heteronormativity is a core value of the corporate elite. In fact, this story is not hypothetical. Corporate heteronormativity plays a crucial gatekeeping role in keeping LGBTQ+ people in the closet and in encouraging heterosexual people to presume their continued central role in leadership.
Heteronormativity prevents LGBTQ+ people from accessing the boardroom and the C-Suite in many ways. The paucity of LGBTQ+ people at the top conveys that it is not an inclusive space. The dominance of straight leaders at the top enforces their values and norms on the entire organization. Corporate heteronormativity plays a crucial gatekeeping role in keeping LGBTQ+ people in the closet and in encouraging straight men to presume their continued central role in leadership. As a result, LGBTQ+ people likely feel excluded from the higher echelons of the corporate ladder.
Social science research shows that feelings of “belonging” resulting from representation impact performance in educational and professional settings. Political science demonstrates that being represented by “people who look like you” instills a sense of “empowerment.” Finally, the signaling function of representation conveys information to minority groups about their place in society. If heteronormativity prevents LGBTQ+ people from being “out” in corporate leadership contexts, one can only imagine the harm that the closet may cause to these communities.
To understand corporate heteronormativity, first we must define the term. Corporate heteronormativity may be understood as the unspoken presumption that leadership is straight, which includes a presumption that norms related to leadership are heterosexual—and oftentimes masculine. Such norms include the homogeneity incentive, which favors male dominance and homosociality in leadership, and is discussed in the second section of this Part. Outsiders therefore struggle to “fit” into upper management positions, and they often force themselves to conform to this normativity to climb the corporate ladder. In other words, they have confined themselves to the “closet.”
A. Corporate Heteronormativity
Heteronormativity describes a worldview that assumes the sexes are male and female and that their purpose is to couple. Within the corporate sector, and particularly the corporate elite, heteronormativity constitutes an invisible yet nearly ubiquitous assumption. LGBTQ+ leaders, like black swans, are the exceedingly rare phenomenon that proves the rule: the corporate world is straight.
Anti-LGBTQ+ discrimination arises from this heteronormative position. If one assumes heterosexuality to be “normal,” a variety of societal, political, and legal choices ensue. Heteronormative socialization depends on the placement of people within a society into “privileged and stigmatized categories.” This socialization applies to people who are heterosexual and LGBTQ+, and perhaps because of heteronormativity, sexual minorities are more likely to “queer multiple aspects of their lives, not just their sexual identities.” Within communities of color, people experience heteronormative expectations differently, partly because of the outsider or embattled nature of those identities. As people move up in the corporate world, they assume their places in the heteronormative hierarchy. As these heteronormative beliefs solidify from childhood, they naturally extend into adult life, shaping both social norms and legal interpretations that reinforce heterosexuality as the standard.
Heteronormativity shapes corporate spaces in multiple regards. First, the law privileges heterosexual lives, and corporate policies mirror this preference. Legal scholars have explored how heteronormativity is embedded in the law by privileging heterosexual lives as “normal.” The field of family law, for example, historically favored heterosexual understandings of relationships, whether in contexts of marriage, divorce, or even abuse.
Heteronormativity in upper management reflects broader workplace practices, in which firms maintain expectations regarding marriage, family, and leisure. Much like in family law, firms reward heterosexuality “through the policies and practices they enact and the customs and traditions they support and celebrate.” These include benefits for nuclear family arrangements, heterosexual rituals celebrating engagements or marriages, informal joking or flirting with co-workers, clients that assume heterosexuality, and a gendered division of labor.
Those who are not heterosexual must manage their identities to navigate workplace social exclusion. Moreover, even with legal protections, anti-discrimination laws often render “sexuality ‘irrelevant’ at work,” failing to question the “in-built heteronormative paradigm.” Courts and employers may not challenge the heteronormative assumptions that insist sexual minorities “‘leave their sexuality at home’ in the same way that heterosexuals are (erroneously) believed to do.”
Second, corporate contexts police physical appearance, as firms demand “worker performances according to essentialized masculine and feminine scripts, in particular requiring women workers to satisfy a male definition of attractiveness.” This reflects established feminist analysis of corporate masculinity regarding the “double bind” in which women must work like men do while exhibiting typically feminine traits, and the “triple bind,” in which women must behave more ethically.
Third, heteronormativity in corporate environments reinforces occupational sex segregation. The interaction between sex roles and sexual orientation leaves gay men more likely to work in female-dominated industries, while lesbians will do the opposite. In that sense, we can see how gender stereotyping may lead gay men to remain closeted so that they can ascend the corporate ladder.
Corporate heteronormativity also relates to LGBTQ+ people choosing work with higher interdependence or social perceptiveness. The selection of these professions suggests “identity safety and self-preservation factor prominently in [their] career choices.” In short, LGBTQ+ people may assume the corporate ladder remains closed for them, so they consciously avoid attempting to move up within a firm. And heterosexual people—even those who think of themselves as inclusive —may presume LGBTQ+ people do not belong in those spaces given the lack of community within the firm. It is not surprising, then, that scholars have found that the development opportunities of lesbian and gay workers are stifled, maintaining heteronormativity in leadership and the organizational hierarchy. This trend will only deepen as companies continue to pull back from DEI commitments.
Firm preferences for those who conform to heteronormative standards, alongside LGBTQ+ proclivities to avoid risk-taking professions, add up to a clear outcome: only a few corporate leaders are openly LGBTQ+. These phenomena leave LGBTQ+ people outside of upper management and also preclude them from the material benefits that come with these highly compensated positions. Within the LGBTQ+ community, those with privileged backgrounds—the “creamy layer”—dominate the few that approach the corporate world’s apex.
B. The Homogeneity Incentive
This corporate heteronormativity is an outgrowth of the homogeneity incentive, where corporate leaders articulate rigorous and clear norms of leadership that conform tightly around typically masculine norms of behavior, including confidence, aggression, and risk-taking. In the corporate space, masculine work patterns dominate. Traits such as hubris, over-confidence, narcissism, a desire to build empires, rivalry, and envy (such as a desire to keep up with peer CEOs) undergird decision-making by leaders, including CEOs. Studies suggest that these traits are more prevalent in men who face significant pressure to conform to masculine norms. Yet these traits do not necessarily lead to effective leadership and may foster “toxic” work environments.
Designating these traits as “toxic masculinity,” though, casts an unnecessarily pejorative light on what passes as widely accepted leadership skills. This is especially true given that such skills define corporate leadership so much that they are perceived as neutral aspects of corporate life. People of all sexes strive to mimic these norms to advance in the corporate hierarchy.
Leaders identify subordinates whose skills mirror their own. Homogeneity can generate efficiency and facilitate decisions that reflect corporate cultural traits. The homogeneity incentive operates in benign yet widely acceptable ways. It explains how diversity diminishes as one moves up the corporate hierarchy, not only with regard to obvious vectors such as educational background, sex, and race, but also with regard to matters such as sexual orientation.
Maleness, as pointed to above, is the trait that binds nearly all CEOs to each other. It serves as a marker for skills and fit. Women have matched and even surpassed men in the elite educational institutions that furnish those who come to occupy the corporate elite. The socialization process within the firm continues to foster a male homosocial clubbiness. These men are nearly all cisgender and heterosexual, where the conflation of gender and sexuality is so profound that it is hard to fully separate the concepts. For that reason, the men who run the corporate sector also conform to predominant notions of gender and sexuality. Some have observed that the #Metoo Movement may have exacerbated this gender segregation in the corporate elite. While some women have joined boards, they remain underrepresented.
One way leaders justify choosing those similar to themselves is the Law of Inverse Certainty: “the more important the management decision, the less precise the tools to deal with it . . . and the longer it will take before anyone knows it was right.” A corporate leader’s purview includes regular, sometimes meticulous, evaluation of broad and disparate data that link markets involving billions of dollars as they oversee tens, even hundreds of thousands of workers. The uncertainty of this leadership task, perhaps even more pronounced in political and economic turmoil, heightens the deference boards will give leaders to define what is needed to succeed. This increases the replication of skills and an embrace of “fit.” The result is a purportedly identity-neutral framework to explain how some ascend the corporate hierarchy and others do not. The leaders of the corporation view themselves, and present themselves to others, as the standard-bearers for the corporation’s success; their skills prove essential for the firm’s continued profitability.
This homogeneity incentive plays a central role in the pressure to conform to insider norms, especially for those considered as outsiders. Whether with regard to race or to gender, firm cultures pressure people of all sexes to “man up”—they must emphasize skills that conform to the men at the top. People rising the corporate ladder engage in this “manning up”: they adopt a broader set of behaviors that conform to leaders’ expectations to increase their likelihood of success. People adapt to advance their career, emphasizing certain traits and hiding, or covering, others. These traits include identities of gender and sexuality, not to mention race, class, ability, national origin, and other aspects of one’s identity.
III. The Corporate Governance Closet
We know that LGBTQ+ people are everywhere, and yet somehow those in power remain largely invisible. The higher one looks up the corporate food chain, the fewer visible, openly LGBTQ+ people there are. But this is the way in which LGBTQ+ identity diverges from other widely discussed categories, notably those of race and sex. While some Black people may pass as white, and some women may pass as men, these phenomena would seem to be more exceptional than the prevalence of closeted people within the LGBTQ+ community. As a result, while it may be that heterosexism keeps them out of leadership positions, it seems at least equally likely that many are there, just not visibly so. But how do we know that closeted people are actually there? Accurately understanding the corporate closet requires a great deal of knowledge that may prove hard to obtain.
As I began to investigate this topic, I found shockingly little research on the closet itself, and even less on the corporate closet. People who are in the closet do not admit it, and people who once were in the closet may not wish to discuss it. Indeed, a conversation with an executive compensation specialist confirmed my suspicions that far more people are in the closet than out at the executive level. The absence of data on the closet reflects a deeper methodological challenge in understanding these phenomena. The secrecy and stigma around the closet means that minimal analysis and data actually exist to define the field—an issue compounded by the rollback of the Nasdaq rule and the widespread retreat from corporate DEI programs.
The closet’s operations remain a mystery. Younger generations, at least in North America and Europe, seem to embrace LGBTQ+ identity far more readily than prior generations could have imagined. For the generation that currently occupies and soon will occupy corporate leadership positions, it is very much a live issue. This Part will explore how homonegativity drives those who are LGBTQ+ to keep their identity private or repress it.
First, it will use queer theory around gender and sexual identity performance to elaborate on how rising leaders perform “executive realness” to succeed. This includes how performativity has been considered in U.S. jurisprudence. Second, it will examine how performing this “executive realness” is particularly complex for LGBTQ+ people in the corporate space, requiring agile identity management surrounding being in or out of the closet and, correspondingly, conforming or not conforming to corporate heteronormativity. This section will also examine how corporate heteronormativity fosters—one may say mandates—internalized homonegativity (again, my neologism), in which LGBTQ+ people resign themselves to a second-class status. Third, it will discuss Tim Cook’s coming out as a case study that showcases these dynamics.
A. U.S. Jurisprudence, Performativity, and Executive Realness
One aspect of queer theory that allows us to examine the impact of corporate heteronormativity involves recognizing gender as performative—a concept explored by Eve Sedgwick, Judith Butler, and others. In the past few decades, this awareness has seeped into U.S. Supreme Court jurisprudence. This subpart will first look at the Court’s jurisprudence on performativity and then turn toward examining the concept of performing “executive realness.”
The U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins delved into the corporate landscape at the leading accounting and consulting firm. The core question was whether one could claim sex discrimination when other women were not facing discrimination. The Court found that corporate expectations that one conforms to certain gender roles to advance in the firm could themselves trigger a claim for discrimination. This landmark decision reflected an increasingly rapid mapping of queer understandings of performativity onto our legal landscape.
This understanding continued to gather pace, as it authorized broader readings of anti-discrimination law. In Oncale v. Sundowner, even Justice Scalia embraced the gender performativity framework. The ruling held workers on all-male oil platforms could still face sex discrimination, even in the absence of sex differences. The man who faced sexual harassment simply occupied the place of the woman in this specific workplace context.
Later, the understanding of performativity became central to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission’s own interpretation of discrimination rules. They found that gender discrimination was capacious enough to encompass discrimination based on gender identity or sexual orientation. This debate came to a head in Bostock v. Clayton County, as the Supreme Court found that this interpretation of sex discrimination was in fact the proper interpretation of antidiscrimination law.
These cases establish the role performativity plays in our professional lives. Corporate professionals must follow the homogeneity incentive through “executive realness.” This term borrows from queer ballroom culture to describe the performance of corporate leadership. Notably, the term “executive realness” comes from a radically distinct social context: drag ball culture. Paris is Burning, a 1990 film by Jennie Livingston, documented drag ball competitions of the late 1980s, a culture that continues today. Largely populated by queer Black and Latina working class people, balls involve competitions to appear to pass in high-status roles, such as “supermodel,” “schoolgirl,” “military” (the film predates the inclusion of LGBTQ+ people in the armed forces), and others. Judges assess competitors on whether contestants “pass” in their category. Participants compete in queer families called “houses,” ruled by a “mother,” and some walk away proud, with trophies in hand.
In the “executive realness” category, the competitors wear well-fitted suits as contestants strut in an appropriately focused and powerful fashion. Dorian Corey, a drag queen and designer, describes these categories, including “executive realness”: “[I]n real life, you can’t get a job as an executive. . . . Black people have a hard time getting anywhere, and those that do are usually straight. In a ballroom you can be anything you want. You’re not really an executive but you’re looking like an executive. And therefore you’re showing the straight world that ‘I can be an executive. If I had the opportunity, I could be one, because I can look like one.’ And that is a fulfillment. Your peers, your friends are telling you, ‘Oh, you’d make a wonderful executive.’”
Thus, the ball is a place of escapism, in which young queer people can pretend to belong in a middle- or upper-class society that rejects them. Of the categories, the most privileged is the corporate hierarchy. There, nobody needs to pose as privileged. Or so we would think.
In reality, “executive realness” serves as the coin of the realm in both locales. Executive realness involves expressing a variety of skill sets that convey one’s capacity to perform in the upper levels of the corporation. Acting the part means winning the trophy—whether in the C-Suite, the boardroom, or the ballroom.
While many LGBTQ+ people have an easier time breaking into a corporate leadership role than those in the ballroom, those who do ascend the corporate ladder must figure out how they can best fit into their firm’s culture. That may involve pretending to like playing or watching sports, engaging in boating, or whatever the higher-ups enjoy in an effort to build the social network that pays off in upper management positions. Executive realness is how LGBTQ+ people perform their sex, gender, and sexual identity in ways that allow one to fit into the corporate hierarchy. In other words, part of “executive realness” is appearing straight. Or, if one is among the very few out LGBTQ+ people, being straight-acting. We can draw parallels between “executive realness” for LGBTQ+ folks and those who are straight.
In performing this “executive realness,” LGBTQ+ folks must engage in incessant identity management. Identity management is the term social scientists use to describe the behavior LGBTQ+ people use so they can manage an open or closeted identity. “For lesbian and gay employees to function and avoid discrimination in the workplace, they may adopt strategies to conceal sexual orientation while at work.” Examples include not discussing one’s private life, not bringing a partner to work events, refraining from discussing romantic engagements, or discussing one’s partner in gender neutral terms.
To be clear, being out/remaining in the closet is not a clear binary. Coming out can be an iterative process. For those who keep their LGBTQ+ identity off any published source, they may come out in some spaces but not in others, keeping work colleagues and clients, and family and friends separate. For those in the closet, bringing one’s “whole self ” to work is not a value they feel they can pursue. When one is not discoverably LGBTQ+, one may stay closeted in one job and come out in another, or with one recruiter but not with another.
For those who are able to come out, this is not an absolute, one-off choice, but an act that also involves agile identity management. Each individual will make different choices in each context as to how to manage this information. Since remaining in the closet is a form of lying about oneself, it only makes sense that the individual would develop a careful practice to maintain the fiction of a straight identity. Even some leaders who are out interact in interesting ways “still [insisting] that gay male subordinates be discreet about their sexuality in the workplace.” They may do so to both aid the junior person’s career as well as perhaps their own.
Leadership’s performative nature invites us to map other outsider identities as they relate to the corporate elite. Executive realness describes not only the lived experience of LGBTQ+ individuals but also applies to race and gender. A Black person is not just a Black person on paper but may also identify as Black and feel they must perform a specific Blackness at the firm. Firms favor nonwhites who are “the most racially homogenized outsiders.” Black people also engage in identity management. One firm denied promotion to a Black employee “because they perceived her to be ‘flaunting’ her racial identity—that is, to be ‘out of the closet’ about her non assimilationist racial identity.” Firms may discriminate not based on race, but on “just how black, in a social or stereotypical sense, a phenotypically black employee appears to be.” As with LGBTQ+ people, firms expect nonwhites “to remove performative evidence of racial difference. Only phenotypic difference is allowed.”
This is especially the case in a corporate world that embraces, at least officially and publicly, diversity. Firms now may eschew the total erasure of non-phenotypic traits because firms want some “authenticity.” But, while firms seek diversity, they do so on their own terms. While those in the closet must completely hide their identity, they do so in the fashion that Black people who engaged in passing would enter white spaces. Queer theory’s questioning of the fixed nature of identity helps us account for racial performativity.
Switching from racial to gender dynamics, we encounter similar, yet distinct, challenges faced by women in the corporate sphere. Women who climb the corporate ladder continue to find themselves in the double bind. Men define the skills required to perform effectively in corporate contexts and women must engage in what I call “manning up”—work like men at work. An extreme example is how Margaret Thatcher hired a voice coach to help her deepen her voice when she first ran for Prime Minister.
The other side of the double bind surfaced in the celebrated Price Waterhouse v. Hopkins case. There, a woman employee was expected to be more feminine, and faced exclusion because her masculine ways violated the gender binary—a dynamic that continues, as in the widely noted case of Françoise Brougher, the chief operating officer (COO) of Pinterest. Societal rejection of gender-nonconforming people forces women to balance when and where they must act like men or act like women. More recently, scholars have articulated a “triple bind,” which captures the ways in which women are held to a higher standard, including ethical standards, than men. Because women tend to be rule-followers, they confront a harsher censure when they do break the rules.
This analysis of women’s “manning up” also applies to others who find themselves feminized in the straight male corporate world. Gay men sometimes exhibit characteristics akin to heterosexual women, including being passive, sensitive, and adopting a communal leadership style. This femininity, in the corporate sector, further distances gay men from fitting into a traditional male leadership performance. This is where sex discrimination, gender discrimination, and sexual orientation discrimination meet.
As executive realness is the relevant performativity, we also should take account of the ways in which straight men themselves perform masculinity. Men behave as “men” to fit in. It is not just gay men who act straight to pass. Straight men themselves engage in the same behaviors to suppress weakness, vulnerability, and feelings. They just learn to do so at a much earlier age. Like Margaret Thatcher, men often deliberately lower their voice to convey authority.
Less discussed though, is that the mandate to perform executive realness even binds cisgender heterosexual men to act in specific ways to climb the corporate ladder. As a result, even straight men proactively choose attire and engage in behavior that conforms to a masculine norm. People of all sexes perform masculinity to convey their leadership acumen. For many excluded identities, acting like the dominant group opens the potential for reaching upper management. Think of the lead character in American Psycho who must have the suit, the tie, and even the business card that both fits into the code of masculine performance and simultaneously bests the other men.
The competitive norm between male figures in the corporate world sarcastically portrayed in American Psycho occurs in the real world as well. Executive realness is performed when members of the top leadership desire to “conquest and control” their marketplace and to outperform their colleagues. These acts are ultimately performative, signaling to others that “I” am “you,” a member of the in-group. This performance creates the corporate masculinity of upper management, a group that replicates itself.
All men, including gay men, know that this is the code, and it pays off whether one is engaged in corporate work or research. Men enact their gender in specific and performative ways, just as women do, but in ways that are often more subtle. The rigidity of these codes provides a clear blueprint on how to attain the elusive “fit” into these overwhelmingly male corporate elites.
While queer theorists seem to avoid engaging with the corporate context, their emphasis on performativity reflects the identity management of the closet. LGBTQ+ people and women sit outside of the traditional male performance of leadership skills. As a result, they focus on “seeming” like a leader, whereas for straight cisgender men, much of this comes as a matter of course. Even so, these men also attend to their gendered behavior—perhaps in far less self-conscious ways—through the performance of executive realness.
In sum, people of all sexes perform masculinity to convey their leadership acumen. For many excluded identities, acting like the dominant group opens the potential for inclusion in upper management. As DEI initiatives face growing resistance, this strategy is becoming both more necessary and more precarious.
B. How the Closet Pays and Who Pays When It Doesn’t
Using our discussion of corporate heteronormativity and the performance of “executive realness” that LGBTQ+ individuals must put on to climb the corporate ladder, it is necessary to examine the closet deeper: how can we best understand why or why not LGBTQ+ leaders conform and perform—by staying in the closet—and what value or harm do these decisions have in corporate spaces?
Closeted people manage their identity for a wide variety of reasons, including several non-corporate rationales. Certainly, some might say that individuals stay in the closet for family or social reasons. Other factors may include preferences around openness or secrecy, risk-taking propensities, demographics, and social network relationships.
Part of the complexity in understanding the closet is that people who have this subject position have their own complex emotions about being out or being closeted, including shame, insecurity, and loss. For many, deciding to stay in the closet provides the individual with a sense of control in that it protects them from the potential risks—losing one’s family, losing one’s job, even losing one’s children—in coming out. Given the sharp risks of coming out, LGBTQ+ people would guard themselves like a hermit crab, living mostly in a shell. Remaining in the closet may provide some LGBTQ+ people with a sense that they can manage their own sexuality, without having it under the purview of their colleagues.
A range of corporate rationales may also explain why LGBTQ+ people choose to remain in the closet. Coming out may be seen as risky, particularly for the generation of people in upper management now, those ascending to the elite, and perhaps even the next generation. It may even be challenging for those in younger generations to imagine these risks. Employers and colleagues may fire, refuse to promote, or isolate people who come out as LGBTQ+, or in some circumstances, are just suspected of it: “some disclosures led to strained relationships and safety concerns.” Those who remain in the closet continue to struggle with heterosexism and the constraints of corporate societal mandates. They may bring other skills to their work that involve their LGBTQ+ identity, such as empathy, but they cannot count bravery and risk-taking among the diverse perspectives they contribute.
One of the messier parts of the adaptation to corporate heteronormativity is the fact that LGBTQ+ people acquiesce to their second class-treatment when they conform to leadership norms. What is difficult is the agency LGBTQ+ people have in this process. When discrimination occurs, there is the discriminator and the target of the discrimination. Most of these situations do not give rise to any objection or legal claim whatsoever. This is because the target of the discrimination or exclusion accepts the mistreatment because of their own self judgment. This phenomenon surely exists across outsider groups, but it is most remarkable within the LGBTQ+ context.
Focusing in on gay men, many often hold “homonegative” attitudes toward effeminate gay men. They value masculinity both within themselves and within others. This femmephobia or “sissyphobia” reflects an internalized prejudice by some gay men against others but also by gay men within themselves. This prejudice leads gay men to defeminize or to “butch it up.” Gay men revere straight-acting behavior, and seek to distance themselves from effeminacy. The trappings of masculinity figure prominently in gay culture.
Heterosexism often targets effeminate, but not masculine, gay men. This is because effeminate gay men violate both norms of sexuality (i.e., not heterosexual) and personality (i.e., not masculine)—a “double deviancy.” Effeminate gay men are viewed as akin to women, and thus confront an in-group bias.
In short, gay men—like straight men—conflate heterosexuality with masculinity. Gay men will even describe “masculinity as the ability to pass as heterosexual.” Indeed, because they already violate norms of sexuality, gay men may have stronger pressure to demonstrate masculinity than straight men, wishing to minimize the social penalties of being gay.
This internalized homonegativity also has a political component. Straight-acting or masculine gay men seek to avoid getting submerged in effeminacy. They may believe that their rights depend on other LGBTQ+ people not performing their identity “too ostentatiously” out of fear that it makes them “too visible.” Decades ago, Andrew Sullivan popularized this theory in his controversial book Virtually Normal, and this opinion persists. Through this conflicted feeling around femininity, gay men engage in a “dual role in both producing and reproducing homophobic and anti-feminine communication.”
Straight-acting gay behavior authorizes straight people to maintain their heterosexism. It plays out in competition for high status corporate leadership roles. The prevailing think manager–think male belief corresponds to link masculinity with status endowment. Gay men then evince a strong desire to “demonstrate competence compared to their heterosexual counterparts, in order to achieve the highest leadership positions”—including disassociating effeminate gay men from effective leadership within work. One 2021 study found a perception of “the masculine gay leader as more effective than the feminine gay leader.” Perhaps the best evidence of this homonegativity’s role in maintaining corporate heteronormativity is a similar 2023 study that found that both gay and straight men have the same level of preference for masculine-presenting gay candidates.
Homonegativity notwithstanding, in a hypercompetitive corporate environment, every advantage must be mined for success, including one’s ability to conform to social norms among the elites one wishes to enter. LGBTQ+ people may view staying in the closet as a way to avoid even potential heterosexism. For this reason, staying in the closet may seem like the wise strategic choice. Leaving advantages on the table may result in decisive losses. Remaining closeted simply provides too many advantages to forego.
Because social connections continue to serve as the basis for work assignments, avoiding suspicions by colleagues is important. Once, as a “Big Law” associate, I found out that the lead partner who was staffing a case for a French client chose the associates who played golf with him instead of me, even though I was fluent in French. These seemingly minor snubs snowball into bigger exclusions for many who are not cisgender white men. It need not be on the golf course or at a football match, but we can easily imagine how straight male homosocial engagements prove quite productive for work endeavors.
On the other side of the ledger in the corporate leadership context sits the benefits to those who do choose to come out and survive to tell the tale. Some report that coming out was an important part of their leadership: “By honestly owning who they are, through confronting and overcoming their fears, individuals gain a sense of strength and power integral to authentic leadership. . . . Gays and lesbians, through the process of coming out, declare their inability to conform, and build skills in challenging and changing cultural norms. They appear ideally suited to exercising innovative leadership in organizations.” Successfully grappling with the challenges of the closet and coming out in the face of dominant heteronormativity may put LGBTQ+ leaders in a position to feel liberated and empowered. Someone who is openly LGBTQ+ may impress others as having gone through a process that involves honesty and courage, as they have faced their fears of rejection by family, friends, or religious communities and thrived.
Part of what makes LGBTQ+ identity so particularly valuable in a corporate leadership setting is this: “[C]oming out is a declaration of an unwillingness to conform. This provides the framework from which skills are developed in challenging cultural norms and the status quo.” The bravery in coming out reflects having survived the identity management processes and vanquished fears of heterosexism and lived heterosexism. Some have found that “being open about one’s sexual identity offered a way to connect with their direct reports and led to authentic leadership experiences.” Coming out is a challenge to the status quo and reflects a deeply personal form of experience in risk-taking—sometimes existential—that can only help leaders make similarly brave choices for their firms. In this sense, those who come out may bring their queerness to a corporate setting through their nonconformity. In addition, leaders who are openly LGBTQ+ may foster an inclusive workplace, communication and connection with colleagues and direct reports, adaptability, and innovative problem solving.
I also want to make clear that the tension between those who are out and those who are in the closet is a real one. There is no question that closeted LGBTQ+ people understand the conflicts of their identity in very meaningful ways. Identity management is a taxing exercise for all involved. They likely suffer internal shame and loss around their perceived inability to come out. They may have regrets about staying in the closet. However, for many who are out, those in the closet get benefits that they could never attain. While those who claim the identity get the respect of being out, they are nevertheless in a perverse have/have not situation where they often miss out on the professional/economic benefits of rising to the top. That may be changing now, but I fear it’s still more true than not. As DEI and LGBTQ+ inclusion face growing backlash, staying in the closet may not just remain an advantage—it may become a necessity.
In short, it is very costly to be out.
C. Case Study: Tim Cook
A case study will elucidate these powerful dynamics. Tim Cook’s coming out story demonstrates several truths about the closet: the closet’s power over those in it, the fraught position of others regarding closeted individuals, and the ambivalence of identity that DEI politics too often elide.
As Cook prepared to become Apple’s CEO, Gawker informed Cook that they were going to expose his gay identity. His hand forced, Cook came out. However, before we focus on that moment, what drove Cook to stay in the closet until then? While it is plausible that community or family norms drove him to stay closeted, it seems that the most likely explanation is simply that his professional goals demanded it. If you follow his professional trajectory at Apple, it is clear that his prominence meant that he was under intense scrutiny. At the same time, none of his homologues at other firms or predecessors within Apple had been openly gay. Cook stayed in the closet because he did not want to take the risk of ruining his chances of continuing to climb the hierarchy.
The closet, then, facilitated Cook’s ascension of the corporate hierarchy and he profited mightily from staying in it as long as he did. His compensation in 2022 was nearly $100 million, placing him as one of the highest paid executives in history. While that was after he came out, one could argue that once he reached the CEO level, the risk to his career was lower than at any prior point. The pay disparity between CEO and any lower position is so substantial that for Cook to hold out until he was at the precipice of that level of success (and even then, the decision was not entirely of his own volition) is telling.
The fact that Cook, one of the most powerful people in the world, felt it necessary to stay in the closet for so long underscores how, even in the most rarified upper management circles, power is relative and unstable, and even those in the highest elite must still watch their backs when they are different. Surely this tale, which involves someone in the closet, holds lessons for those with other outsider identities—of race, class, or any other difference.
Cook must have feared, even as he approached the CEO position, that even an inkling that he was not the exact fit for this most powerful position would prove foolhardy. To weigh helming one of the richest companies in history versus experiencing the shame or discomfort of remaining in the closet seems like a simple identity management cost-benefit analysis, even for those of us who care most about being openly gay. Cook’s story is not just about how powerful the closet is, but also how well it pays to stay in the closet for this elite.
What are the effects, though, on others of these “private” choices by leaders like Cook? Let us start with Gawker’s choice to out him. Cook’s remaining in the closet, while holding such prominence in an almost entirely straight corporate elite, certainly invites journalistic inquiry. Gawker’s actions do of course raise core questions about the ethics of outing. “Outing” was intensely controversial when it surfaced in the early 1990s, propelled by journalist Michelangelo Signorile’s efforts. Signorile argued at the time that society’s leaders who held power in the public and private sectors while remaining closeted lost their right to keep their identity private. Their closetedness, he argued, enabled anti-gay oppression. The progress of lesbian and gay rights demanded their outing.
Within and outside Apple, Cook’s choice to remain in the closet put others in a fraught position. Within Apple, the costs prove challenging to measure. How many people refrained from coming out because of Cook’s example? Surely, some inside Apple knew he was in the closet and that may have reinforced the wisdom of staying in the closet. It also reminds those who are openly gay of the costs of being out. For those who have no choice but to be openly LGBTQ+, it is a reminder of their second-class citizenship in the corporate world. His closetedness put others in a fraught position of facing pressure to remain closeted. For straight people, closeted leaders legitimize the belief that there is in fact something to be ashamed of.
Beyond Apple, we can only imagine an alternate universe in which Cook had come out earlier and how many more LGBTQ+ people would feel free to pursue tech careers because they felt they would fit. The value of descriptive representation is a broader social phenomenon. We know from manifold social science studies that people enter professions where they believe they will “fit,” and so the cost here is an opportunity cost of those who looked elsewhere.
In the end, Cook chose to advance his career. It may be that coming out as a CEO at his level outweighs the prior choice. There is no way to calculate it. We certainly should celebrate the diversity he brings now as one of the very few openly lesbian or gay CEOs in the Fortune 500. The official reason Cook came out was because of the letters that he received from children. Yet his path to that role represents the dearth of LGBTQ+ corporate leaders prior to him and even today. His own coming out only when forced by Gawker, like that of entrepreneur Peter Thiel, proves that it is impossible for LGBTQ+ people to come out while leading a major firm, except under duress.
This question must be analyzed when we contemplate LGBTQ+ corporate diversity: why the reluctance to proclaim one’s identity? When one has the power, resources, and privilege of Cook, should it not give you the wherewithal to be who you are? Apparently not.
When you look at Apple’s board at the time of Cook’s coming out, it is hard to imagine the board firing Cook for being gay. Perhaps he feared it would close off other career options. Or perhaps, due to pressure from corporate finance titans, he felt it was not acceptable to admit his homosexuality in public. Coming out constitutes a departure from the clubby nature of male corporate elites and those in the closet may fear being cast aside from their (highly lucrative) social networks.
Perhaps it was something less explicit yet even more sinister: the self-hatred that many, most, or possibly all LGBTQ+ persons experience growing up in an interminably heterosexist world. Such self-hatred is the result of being told since birth that we had to have partners of the opposite gender and enact the gender we were born as.
Regardless of what caused Tim Cook to keep himself in the closet until he could no longer stay there, the fact that he did come out is significant. It is worth applauding his honesty. The fact that he went on to still successfully run one of the largest corporate entities in history suggests that being out is not a death sentence for one’s career. But to read it solely in this fashion ignores a key challenge. This case study underscores a deeper ambivalence around LGBTQ+ identity that could shed light on genuine conflicts within and about all DEI efforts. The question of how to grapple with the corporate governance closet is a complex one, but the simple addition of openly LGBTQ+ people will not solely make the shift. It must be accompanied by proactive shift from heteronormativity. As much as I am sure this suggestion would arouse eye rolls if not outright jeers among corporate leaders, the fact is that corporate leadership’s encompassing a more capacious gender framework would improve life for all, notably women.
IV. A Queer Agenda for Corporate Governance Reform
While the prior parts of this Article engaged in more of a critical analysis of the role of identity and the corporate board, this final Part will steer us toward a more positivist framing, in which we will examine what, if anything, should change about corporate governance and governmental policy on corporate governance. The purpose of inclusion efforts should be to promote and include enough LGBTQ+ people so that executive realness is no longer about appearing straight, with that shift aiding both LGBTQ+ people and straight and cisgendered people. As such, this Part will first sketch out some of the ways to reform corporate governance to achieve LGBTQ+ inclusion. Then, it will suggest queer lessons for broader DEI issues.
We cannot just wait this problem out—time alone will not solve this exclusion. Gary Becker argued fifty years ago that discrimination was a costly inefficiency, and it would disappear over time without further action. Until recently, one may have suspected this would work for LGBTQ+ people, given their relatively speedy progress. Here I argue that corporate heteronormativity drives exclusion and those who benefit from it maintain it. This capture of corporate leadership mirrors that of men more broadly. After all, women continue to lag far behind men in leadership, decades after matching them in business schools. This is not just generational—capture will not disappear of its own accord.
Debating whether and how to count closeted people for leadership inclusion cannot distract us from the goal. When I first looked at the closet, I got lost in assessing whether and how people in the closet “count” as LGBTQ+. Closeted people certainly bring a unique perspective, but whether they count is the wrong question. It traps us inside an identity framework defined by other identities with more consistently self-evident members. With race or gender, one’s ability to “cover” or remain in the closet is sharply diminished. Closeted people count because everyone counts. Part of the reason DEI garnered enemies relates to how it felt exclusionary. Even straight cisgender men count for thinking about the closet—everyone has to pitch in to make firms inclusive. Firms and their leaders, regardless of identity, must move beyond the heteronormativity that defines them. Corporate spaces should be ones where people can be openly LGBTQ+ and not fear reprisal or consequences. When firms realize that change, it will not just help LGBTQ+ people, but everyone will be freer to be themselves.
A. Three Policy Proposals
Including LGBTQ+ people requires more than adding them to the pot and stirring. Rather, corporate governance needs to adapt to be less heteronormative so that LGBTQ+ people are more inclined to enter firms, move up the corporate ladder, and stay. In this sense, perhaps perversely for some anti-capitalist queer theorists, queer theory can advance a project for a post- or less-identitarian corporate executive realism.
How would a queer perspective change corporate governance? One problem with the established DEI framework is the focus on excluded identity rather than the cause of the exclusion: corporate heteronormativity. Attending to the closet’s causes—corporate heteronormativity—may redirect firms toward more and more effective inclusion.
Three policy projects come to mind: bringing people in, moving people up, and shifting firm culture. First, firms must focus on making structural change to include different people. Firms and industry organizations must adopt proactive measures to ensure LGBTQ+ individuals and communities feel they belong. Rather than adding LGBTQ+ people like decorative oats atop a loaf of bread, firms must alter the very structure of the loaf—changing the recipe itself. Nasdaq’s use of the term “queer” served an important signaling function. It suggests the inclusion of those who do not traditionally “fit” into corporate norms and challenges rigid ideas of who belongs in leadership.
While signaling inclusion is valuable, it must be reinforced by concrete actions that reshape workplace norms. Human Resources should lead these changes, but the C-Suite must model them. For example, instead of simply offering parental leave, leadership should actively normalize taking it, signaling that all family structures are equally valued. Inclusion should extend beyond nondiscrimination policies and foster an environment where LGBTQ+ professionals feel supported from recruitment onwards.
Second, firms must focus on promotion and retention within the firm. Once LGBTQ+ people are hired, they must be actively supported in moving up the corporate ladder. To achieve this, firms must adopt proactive anti-groupthink postures and challenge corporate heteronormativity in leadership. Truly inclusive policies must distinguish between the kinds of “fit” that drive firm success and those that merely reinforce groupthink.
Firms with a consistent promotion of high performing people from a variety of backgrounds will be more inclusive to outsiders who do not “fit” in superficial ways but bring expertise and knowledge that enrich the firm. C-Suite leaders and recruiters should seek broad candidate pools and ensure that when outsider candidates are passed over, it is for legitimate reasons and not unconscious bias.
Third, firms need to shift their culture. A queer agenda for corporate governance demands a more forceful questioning of established leadership frameworks and firm culture. A shift from macho-competitiveness to a more authentic governance would benefit firms in many ways. “Founders Mode,” a hyper-masculine leadership style, belies contributions by those who contribute distinct skills to leadership. Creating room for the full panoply of human capacity would undoubtedly improve governance. Clearing hegemonic family norms may include all sorts of identities to succeed in the firm. A more intensive support of care work would advance this agenda.
B. Why Not Anti-Discrimination Law?
While Bostock held that Title VII covers LGBTQ+ individuals as part of the prohibition against sex discrimination, it would be especially challenging for this law to provide a real remedy. Few executives bring cases, and discrimination cases at that level nearly always settle. Executives may even be considered “employers” for Title VII purposes, excluding them from its protections. This rule only excludes some leaders, but it sets a norm limiting Title VII’s applicability.
Individuals facing discrimination avoid claims for fear of employers judging them. Regardless of the claim’s veracity, controversy must be avoided. Market players—both consumers of human capital (large firms) and sellers of human capital (leaders themselves)—know that anti-discrimination law cannot ban discrimination.
The subtleties of “fit” elude legal oversight. Firm leaders determine what skills the firm requires and then who possesses these skills. Discriminatory effects sometimes follow. Unintentional discrimination continues to perpetuate exclusions, many involving race as well. Indeed, these phenomena hold utility for other questions of exclusion.
C. Queer Theory’s Value for Corporate Governance, Beyond Identity
The queer analysis of corporate governance is not just helpful for advancing LGBTQ+ inclusion. Queer theory is bigger than just figuring out who is gay. It allows us to rethink identity, how it works, and how it relates, or does not relate, to corporate leadership. It can help us question preconceived notions of who belongs and who does not.
Several takeaways arise from LGBTQ+ diversity for other identities targeted for inclusion. First, and perhaps foremost, let us be at least somewhat skeptical of pure identitarianism—whether from a left or a right perspective. In some circumstances identity may matter, in others it will not. Identity sometimes relies on tropes of “authenticity,” which provide little guidance as to the value of inclusion. What makes one person “authentic” will surely fail to do so regarding another.
If there is one thing the closet—or passing, for that matter—shows: one’s identity is not always what it seems. Closeted people are gay but may not act it, just as those who are “passing” would not act Black even though they are. Queer theory destabilizes these aspects of identity. A vast difference exists between who people are and who they seem to be. Contemporary culture sometimes favors an intentionality around identity, presuming its presence, even without any identity management practice.
Second, the “creamy layer,” the elite within an outsider group, holds lessons. Sometimes people who benefit from inclusion efforts may actually need it the least. Applied to the corporate context, few LGBTQ+ people rise to the executive or the board level. They likely are “but for queers”: but for their being queer, they would conform perfectly to a heteronormative social framework. These are the most “straight acting” and gender conforming LGBTQ+ people. They likely possess other insider markers—an elite education, a middle- or upper-class background, racialized privilege, and already extensive experience among leading firms.
Third, the “executive realness” discussion shows that everyone engages in some performative behavior as they move up the corporate ladder. “Executive realness” is not just for queers and closeted folks, or women, who perform under the double or the triple bind. Straight, cisgender men also perform. They put on a show about who they are precisely to fit in or to demonstrate their mastery of the codes of upper management. It may be more innate to them, and feel less performative, but everyone is performing their gender, sex, and sexual orientation in conscious and subconscious ways.
Part of that code is the way in which insiders determine who becomes an insider. Gatekeeping still merits discussion as a central feature of the elite code whereby insiders choose who and how they exclude, both as managerial decisions but also to perform one’s own identity. This social arrangement, akin in some ways to the popular clique of Mean Girls, functions whether on a corporate board or an executive committee. One’s insider-ness rarely is beyond question.
A last helpful contribution of queer theory is the “Q.” Earlier in lesbian and gay history, “queer” was too disruptive to name. Then, the “Q” meant “questioning.” Indeed, effective governance does require just that. Thomas Jefferson himself suggested that every twenty years there should be a rebellion, with the idea that a deep questioning of established values would be beneficial.
In that spirit, let us take the “Q” toward questioning corporate governance and in particular the received wisdom on diversity and inclusion. Some inclusion frameworks lean too heavily on identity to stand in for actual experiential diversity. This raises questions from all quarters about the validity of inclusion efforts. A focus on diverse experiences may prove more productive.
Centering experience over identity allows us to question groupthink wherever it surfaces. It is especially likely to surface in the relatively limited pool of white male executives who continue to hold onto the vast majority of executive positions despite recent inclusion efforts. Critics may wonder if my reference to this group relies on the precise identitarianism that I questioned above. The point is not to focus on their identity but rather to grasp its function within corporate governance. If “questioning” means one thing in the corporate governance space, it will be about the power of leadership renewal. As Yaron Nili and I argued in our article Diversity by Term Limits?, renewal holds the capacity to shift the way we understand the allocation of power.
To sum up, corporate governance can benefit significantly not only from including LGBTQ+ people, but from reflecting on the lessons of queer theory for corporate governance itself.
Conclusion
This Article discussed the story of Tim Cook, Apple’s legendary CEO. Despite all of his economic and social power, he could not come out on his own. This illustrates the closet’s power and the fraught aspect of outsider identities in the corporate governance realm. This is particularly the case with identities that continue to evoke shame, such as LGBTQ+ identity. Recent anti-LGBTQ+ political developments only aggravate the closet’s potency.
Queer theory provides useful angles into understanding inclusive corporate governance leadership. It reveals how complex it is to include LGBTQ+ people in corporate governance, but also how gender, sex, and sexual orientation figure into how we conceptualize leadership itself. The Article shows the vicious circle of corporate heteronormativity, in which the lack of LGBTQ+ leaders reinforces their exclusion. Without visible representation, current and future generations will continue to struggle to envision themselves in leadership roles, leading many to either lose out in competitive engagements with straight cisgender colleagues or withdraw altogether due to the prevailing homonegativity. Perhaps the lack of LGBTQ+ leadership explains why so few queer law students take classes such as business associations, corporations, or business law at all.
More broadly, this Article underscores core questions around today’s most heated DEI debates. This Article shows that fostering inclusion requires more than box ticking, particularly because an individual’s queer identity might not be visible or openly announced. In short, understanding the closet subverts neat framings of identity used by legislators and corporate actors, as queerness is not always simply and easily claimed.
We need more knowledge about how to foster effective inclusion. We need to think through how to best reflect diversity in ways that do not feel unnecessarily exclusionary. Unfortunately, the context for such knowledge production is more hostile than ever. The Supreme Court decision in Students for Fair Admission v. President of Harvard College (2023) effectively ended affirmative action in college admissions. This decision emboldened conservative activists who have since turned their attention to corporate DEI initiatives.
While the Nasdaq rule no longer applies, and the heated anti-DEI discourse continues to make waves, inclusion still matters and will continue to matter. As this Article has shown, fostering meaningful inclusion—especially for LGBTQ+ individuals in corporate leadership—is not as simple as implementing diversity mandates. The closet remains a powerful force in shaping who rises to the top, and corporate heteronormativity continues to reinforce the exclusion of those who do not conform to dominant leadership norms. As inclusive efforts face increasing resistance, and LGBTQ+ people find themselves targeted, firms must decide whether to quietly scale back their commitments or take proactive steps to counter exclusionary corporate dynamics. Only the latter will provide a path to improved corporate governance.
