From Female Labor Force Participation to Boardroom Gender Diversity

Abstract

The list of barriers to female representation in management is analogous to the list of barriers to female labor force participation. Accordingly, we examine whether low female labor force participation is the main reason few women hold seats on corporate boards using data from 22 countries over the 2001-2010 period. Using a novel country-level measure of female participation on corporate boards, we show first that the representation of women on boards across countries is actually worse than most surveys suggest. We then examine the extent to which female labor force participation and institutional and country-level characteristics are related to boardroom diversity. We find that labor force participation is significantly related to the representation of women on boards when part-time and unemployed workers are excluded. However, cultural norms, the presence of boardroom quotas and codes promoting gender diversity are also correlated with female representation. This suggests that economic and cultural factors may be important barriers to female career advancement, but that preferences may be less important. While quotas may overcome problems of discrimination, they may be too narrow a policy tool to address other causes of female underrepresentation in management.

Sex Discrimination and Female Top Managers: Evidence from China

“…Firms in more developed provinces (higher GDP per capita) are found to have more female executives, consistent with (Adams and Kirchmaier 2013) finding that country-level income per capita is positively related to female director representation on the board. The coefficients on the ratio of men over women with a college education and the ratio of men over women in the labor force are not significantly different from zero, indicating that firms' candidate pool for top managers is different from the general labor force.…”

“…1 This underrepresentation is striking, especially because female corporate executives are usually found to be better decision makers (or at least no worse) than their male counterparts [see, for example, Dezso and Ross (2012), Huang and Kisgen (2013), and Liu et al (2014a, b)]. Although a large number of studies conjecture that sex discrimination plays a role in preventing females from reaching top management positions (Becker 1971;Bertrand and Hallock 2001;Adams and Kirchmaier 2013), 2 there lacks of evidence, possibly because discrimination is usually illegal and thus companies have obvious incentives to keep discriminatory actions hidden.…”

Gender discrimination before mandated quotas? Evidence from Norway: 1989–2002

“…Teigen, 2012, Chap. 4, Adams andKirchmaier (2013), and Terjesen, Aguilara, and Lorenz (2015) report that other countries have followed Norway's example and enacted similar laws or plan to do so. Teigen (2012) explains the quota law as an outgrowth of the Norwegian state feminist tradition, that is, the law was due to political pressure channelled through political parties.…”

Determinants of Corporate Governance Codes

“…More specifically, the drafters of corporate governance codes may be less favorably disposed to strengthening the rights of investors if this means restricting the influence of the employees' voice on the board. 50 Legal data for the unitary board and employee participation dummies is compiled from Adams and Kirchmaier (2013), Gerner-Beuerle, Paech, and, and the website www.worker-participation.eu.Three variables measure the political and policy-making climate in the issuer country. I include two political governance indicators from the World Bank Worldwide Governance Indicators: regulatory quality, defined as 'the ability of the government to formulate and implement sound policies and regulations that permit and promote private sector development' , and government effectiveness, defined as 'the quality of public services, the quality of the civil service and the degree of its independence from political pressures, the quality of policy formulation and implementation, and the credibility of the government's commitment to such policies' (Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2010).…”

“…More specifically, the drafters of corporate governance codes may be less favorably disposed to strengthening the rights of investors if this means restricting the influence of the employees' voice on the board. 50 Legal data for the unitary board and employee participation dummies is compiled from Adams and Kirchmaier (2013), Gerner-Beuerle, Paech, and Schuster (2013), and the website www.worker-participation.eu.…”