Chipping away at the Glass Ceiling: Gender Spillovers in Corporate Leadership

Abstract

This paper examines the role of women helping women in corporate America. Using a merged panel of directors and executives for large US corporations between 1997 and 2009, we find a positive association between the female share of the board of directors in the previous year and the female share among current top executives. The relationship's timing suggests that causality runs from boards to managers and not the reverse. This pattern of women helping women at the highest levels of firm leadership highlights the continued importance of a demand-side “glass ceiling” in explaining the slow progress of women in business.

Of Journal Editors and Editorial Boards: Who Are the Trailblazers in Increasing Editorial Board Gender Equality?

“…From the extant literature on EBs of management journals, we know that having a female editor in a journal's history is positively associated with the proportion of women on the journal's EB (Mauleón et al, 2013;Metz and Harzing, 2009). In line with the EB literature, the diversity literature indicates that having women at higher levels increases the representation of women at lower organizational levels (Gould, Kulik and Sardeshmukh, 2014;Kurtulus and Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012;Matsa and Miller, 2011). Thus, empirical evidence from the EBs and diversity literatures suggests a positive relationship between female editor and EB gender diversity.…”

Is there an implicit quota on women in top management? A large‐sample statistical analysis

“…Female managers are especially likely to agree that "because of past discrimination, employers should make special efforts to hire and promote qualified women" (Cohen and Huffman, 2007: 682), and many senior male managers may agree. While many of these influences are hard to observe, one potential exception is provided by women on boards, who may act to influence their firms to hire women into senior management (Bilimoria, 2006;Matsa and Miller, 2011); we provide evidence of this in our analysis (see below). It follows that making a public demonstration of progress toward gender equity in senior management is important for firm legitimacy in the eyes of internal and external constituents (Meyer and Rowan, 1977).…”

Trickle‐down effect: The impact of female board members on executive gender diversity

“…Cohen et al, 1998). Previous studies have also recognized the temporal nature of the trickle-down effect and tested the effect over different lags (Kurtulus & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012;Matsa & Miller, 2011). In our study, we tested 1-, 2-, The ASX recommendations are designed to increase the focus on gender diversity in ASX-listed organizations, including at senior levels (ASX, 2009).…”

“…Although the trickle-down effect has been documented previously (Bilimoria, 2006;L. E. Cohen et al, 1998;Kurtulus & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012;Matsa & Miller, 2011), studies have been constrained to the U.S. context. The low representation of women at senior organizational levels is a global issue: Throughout the world, women remain overrepresented at entry and middle organizational levels and in lowproductivity sectors, such as health care (Goldman Sachs & JB Were, 2009;Zahidi & Ibarra, 2010).…”

“…Previous research has investigated lags of up to 5 years between increases in female representation at a senior level and increases at the level immediately below (Kurtulus & Tomaskovic-Devey, 2012;Matsa & Miller, 2011). Therefore, we need to consider the temporal nature of this relationship.…”