Female socialization and the gender of new corporate directors

Steven Schmeiser

International Review of Economics & Finance, 2025, vol. 98, issue C

Abstract: This study examines how female socialization affects the gender of new corporate board appointments. The socialization hypothesis predicts that incumbent directors are more likely to add a woman to their board if their networks of other boards have a high prevalence of women. I examine a sample of over 15,000 new director appointments to S&P 1500 firms from 2012 to 2021 and find broad support for the socialization hypothesis. This study contributes to the literature on the determinants of board structure, the growing literature on female socialization, and also highlights a bootstrapping effect important for increasing board diversity.

Keywords: Board of directors; Board diversity; Corporate board networks; Female socialization (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1059056025000322
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:reveco:v:98:y:2025:i:c:s1059056025000322

DOI: 10.1016/j.iref.2025.103869

Access Statistics for this article

International Review of Economics & Finance is currently edited by H. Beladi and C. Chen

More articles in International Review of Economics & Finance from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().