As Yahoo sale nears, do women in tech get pushed more onto the ‘glass cliff’?

For Yahoo, it's nearly all over but the shouting. Final bids are expected July 18 in the protracted sale of the core Internet business at Yahoo and it likely won't be long before we know the fate of both the faded Internet company and its embattled CEO, Marissa Mayer. When the shouting does come, it's likely to include even more analysis about Mayer's tenure -- what her time at the helm will say about women in technology, what she could have done differently, how she might spend the $55 million in severance she could receive in the event of a change in control.

Many will fault some of her big decisions: Big bets that didn't pay off, such as the $1.1 billion acquisition of the blogging service Tumblr, and key hires who didn't pan out. She promised the web browser Mozilla a lucrative change-in-control deal that could cost bidders more than $1 billion. But others will say that Mayer, like other women before her in technology, was dealt a tough hand in the first place, accepting a particularly precarious leadership role often known as the "glass cliff." Research has shown that women disproportionately receive opportunities to lead at difficult times, and the tech sector would seem to have a preponderance of examples.