Gender differences in speed of advancement: An empirical examination of top executives in the Fortune 100 firms

Rocio Bonet, Peter Cappelli and Monika Hamori

Strategic Management Journal, 2020, vol. 41, issue 4, 708-737

Abstract: Research summary We examine the advancement of women in executive roles in the ranks of the 10 highest executive positions in the Fortune 100 companies in 2001 and 2011. We find that women executives secured top executive positions faster than men, controlling for relevant individual attributes, and that the advantage of women with respect to men grew with the number of years they spent in the organization. The female advantage disappeared once companies had more than one high‐ranking female executive. We make use of several tests to assess possible unobserved differences between men and women executives, including the case–control technique from epidemiology. Our results are consistent with institutional pressures accelerating women's advancement to top executive positions, but they also reveal the limited effectiveness of such pressures. Managerial summary Employers interested in increasing the diversity of their executive ranks should pay attention not only to who is in those jobs but also how long it took them to get there. In our study, women in top jobs got there faster not just because they were better but because they moved through previous positions faster and skipped steps in job ladders. This suggests how diversity at the top can be enhanced without having to wait for more diverse cohorts in lower‐level jobs to slowly advance. The fact that faster advancement slowed once there were a few women in top jobs suggests that support for advancement was indeed a company choice, unfortunately one driven by public appearances.

Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.3125

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:bla:stratm:v:41:y:2020:i:4:p:708-737

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.blackwell ... bs.asp?ref=0143-2095

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Strategic Management Journal from Wiley Blackwell
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().