Gender quotas on corporate boards of directors

Nina Smith and Emma von Essen

IZA World of Labor, 2025, No 7v3, 7v3

Abstract: Arguments for increasing gender diversity on corporate boards of directors by gender quotas range from ensuring equal opportunity to improving firm performance. The introduction of gender quotas in a number of countries, mainly in Europe, has increased female representation on boards. Current research does not unambiguously justify gender quotas on grounds of economic efficiency. In many countries, the number of women in top executive positions is limited, and it is not clear from the evidence that quotas lead to a larger pool of female top executives, who, in turn, are the main pipeline for boards of directors. Thus, other supplementary policies may be necessary if politicians want to increase the number of women in senior management positions.

Keywords: gender quotas; boards of directors; firm performance; spillover effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G34 J16 L25 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://wol.iza.org/articles/gender-quotas-on-corporate-boards-of-directors (text/html)

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

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izawol:journl:2025:n:7v3

Access Statistics for this article

IZA World of Labor is currently edited by Pierre Cahuc

More articles in IZA World of Labor from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) ().