The Gender Gap Among Top Business Executives

Wolfgang Keller, Teresa Molina and William Olney

No 15552, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: This paper examines gender differences among top business executives using a large executive-employer matched data set spanning the last quarter century. Female executives make up 6.2% of the sample and we find they exhibit more labor market churning – both higher entry and higher exit rates. Unconditionally, women earn 26% less than men, which decreases to 7.9% once executive characteristics, firm characteristics, and in particular job title are accounted for. The paper explores the extent to which firm-level temporal flexibility and corporate culture can explain these gender differences. Although we find that women tend to select into firms with temporal flexibility and a female-friendly corporate culture, there is no evidence that this sorting drives the gender pay gap. However, we do find evidence that corporate culture affects pay gaps within firms: the within-firm gender pay gap disappears entirely at female-friendly firms. Overall, while both corporate culture and flexibility affect the female share of employment, only corporate culture influences the gender pay gap.

Keywords: Women; Executive compensation; Gender pay gap; Corporate culture (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F16 J16 J24 J33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-eur and nep-hrm
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15552 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Journal Article: The gender gap among top business executives (2023)
Working Paper: The Gender Gap Among Top Business Executives (2020)
Working Paper: The Gender Gap Among Top Business Executives (2020)
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:cpr:ceprdp:15552

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP15552

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().