Breaking the boardroom gender barrier: the human capital of female corporate directors

Paul Dunn ()

Journal of Management & Governance, 2012, vol. 16, issue 4, 557-570

Abstract: Although there is a paucity of female corporate directors in Canada, women are slowly managing to break the gender barrier of all-male boards of directors. Using resource dependency theory a model is developed that identifies the human capital characteristics that contribute to a woman being appointed to an all-male board. The model is tested on a sample of 193 Canadian firms that appointed women to their boards of directors between 1996 and 2004. The results show that women who are appointed to all-male boards have specialized knowledge skills; either they have firm-specific knowledge as insiders, or they are support specialists with a specific financial or legal expertise. Copyright Springer Science+Business Media, LLC. 2012

Keywords: Boards of directors; Women; Resource dependency; Human capital (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (21)

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DOI: 10.1007/s10997-010-9161-2

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