Women’s Leadership and Corporate Performance

Meijun Qian

No 472, ADB Economics Working Paper Series from Asian Development Bank

Abstract: This paper examines the gender diversity in corporate boardrooms in Asia and the Pacific and how the diversity affects corporate performance. We find that boardroom gender diversity is low in Asia with 7.5% female representation on average in 2012, but showing a 1.8% improvement in 2013. The appointment of female directors and a gender-diverse boardroom are on average positively associated with a firm’s subsequent performance, but with large cross-country and cross-measurement differences. Firm performance is the highest when there are two females on the board. Using two-stage analyses, we find that (i) a firm’s past performance does not predict its choice to add female directors; (ii) cross-country differences in female corporate leadership respond to its economic demand and supply as measured by gender equality in college education, labor participation, wages, and infant survival; and (iii) female representation on the board, when determined by these economic factors, is a significant predictor of a firm’s future performance.

Keywords: corporate performance; development equality; director choices; female leadership (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G38 J71 O16 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2016-01-26
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cfn, nep-cse, nep-dem, nep-hrm, nep-lma and nep-sea
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:ris:adbewp:0472

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