Does Female Leadership Boost Firm Profitability? (in Finnish with an English abstract/summary)

Annu Kotiranta, Anne Kovalainen and Petri Rouvinen

No 1110, Discussion Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy

Abstract: ABSTRACT : Less than a tenth of Finnish firms’ CEOs and chairmen of the board are women; less than a fourth of Finnish firms’ board members are women. An empirical regression analysis of a large firm-level data set suggests that a company led by a women CEO is on average about ten per cent more profitable than a corresponding company led by a man, even after taking into account a number other factors (such as firm size and industry) possibly affecting profitability. The share of woman board members also has a similar impact. The effect of the chairman’s gender is statistically insignificant. These findings are partial correlations; due to data limitations neither causality nor underlying factors are studied

Keywords: gender; equality; discrimination; firm; profitability; corporate governance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J16 J71 L25 M14 M51 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-11-29

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.etla.fi/files/1883_Dp1110.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers from The Research Institute of the Finnish Economy
Contact information at EDIRC.
Series data maintained by Kaija Hyvönen-Rajecki ().