女性の社会進出と取締役会ジェンダー多様性―新興市場諸国の実証分析
Women’s Social Empowerment and Board Gender Diversity: Evidence from Emerging Markets

Summary/Abstract: This paper attempts to examine the effect of women’s social advancement on board gender composition by conducting an empirical analysis of 52,473 firms in emerging market countries consisting of sixteen Central and Eastern European countries, four former Soviet states, and China. To this end, in this paper, we propose a series of hypotheses regarding the effect of women’s socioeconomic status on board gender diversity in emerging markets that are applicable to other world regions and countries. We take on a new empirical perspective, whereby we estimate how women’s social empowerment influences board gender diversity as measured by the probability of appointing a female to the board, the number of female directors, and the Blau index. We also examine whether a comparison between female inside directors and female outside directors or between listed and unlisted firms reveals any asymmetries. The results of our empirical analysis strongly suggest that firms in countries that have successfully improved women’s socioeconomic status in terms of human development levels, educational levels, labor force participation, and income levels tend to have more gender-diverse boards. We also found that women’s social empowerment urges firms to appoint more women to their boards from not just inside but also outside the firm. Our hypothesis that improved socioeconomic status of women has a greater effect on board gender diversity among listed than unlisted firms is supported by our empirical analysis concerning female outside directors. At the same time, this paper produced an unexpected result that firms in countries with higher female political representation tend to have less gender-diverse boards. All of these empirical results are repeatedly reproduced even in estimations that account for various sample constraints or the sample selection bias that may exist between firms with and without female directors.

• Details
• Contents