Where are all the women? Institutional context and the prevalence of women on the corporate board of directors

Abstract

High-profile corporate scandals such as Enron and the recent banking crisis have focused attention on the corporate board of directors and the people who make up this focal group of corporate control. Legislation, corporate governance policies and best practice frameworks have been introduced, which seek to engender boards that draw on diverse skill sets, talents and insights and create a well functioning and gender-balanced team to oversee shareholders’ interests and protect the firm as a going concern. Despite high-profile attention and many initiatives aimed at increasing gender diversity on corporate boards, women remain a minority in the vast majority of board rooms across the world. The continued absence of women from this nexus of corporate power has as yet not been subjected to systematic study. This thesis seeks to address this understudied area, and maps the share of corporate board seats held by women across a wide sample of countries and highlights national, industry and firm level variation in the prevalence of women corporate board directors. Against this descriptive background, a series of linked studies are undertaken that take a nested perspective and consider national, industry and firm level institutional influences in explaining the large and persistent variations in female corporate board directors. The thesis is informed by institutional theory and develops a conceptual framework which is multi-level in character and reflects these different levels of analysis. In light of this framework the thesis empirically tests the role played by national, industry and firm level factors in accounting for the observed differences in the share of board seats held by women. The results of the analysis suggest that institutional context plays an important role in shaping the gender profile of the corporate board of directors. In particular, at the national level, countries with more liberal political views, lower cultural uncertainty avoidance and a larger share of educated women have more women board directors. There are also some indications that in countries where fewer people consider themselves religious and where national governance frameworks are better embedded boards have more female directors. However, these findings are somewhat sample dependent. At the industry level, a larger share of female employees in a given industry is associated with a larger share of female board directors. Finally, at the firm level the analysis found that where the average age of the boards’ directors was lower, women held more board seats. Further investigations at the firm level revealed that where firms employed a nomination committee, women held a larger share of the boards’ directorships. This effect was further augmented when women served on the nomination committee.

Date of Award	1 Jul 2009
Original language	English
Awarding Institution	University of Bath
Supervisor	Steve Brammer (Supervisor) & Bruce Rayton (Supervisor)