Do Board Gender Quotas Generate Horizontal Spillovers?

Abstract

Using a panel of unlisted Italian banks over the period 2006–2018, we examine the extent to which a law that mandatorily introduced female quotas in the boards of Italian listed companies in 2012 had spillover effects on the boards of unlisted banks, which were not required to comply with the quota. Our results show that both the probability of having at least one woman on the board and the proportion of women on the boards of unlisted banks have been rising significantly after the passing of the law. These findings, which are robust to estimating different specifications and to using different estimation techniques, suggest that the quota law contributed to generating a fairer attitude towards women and, more in general, a change in social norms on gender equality. This may have, in turn, generated isomorphic pressures on unlisted banks, inducing them to mimic the board composition of their listed counterparts.

Do women on boards break the glass ceiling or face the glass cliff?

“…Our work deepens the presence of horizontal spillovers in a sample of Italian companies belonging to different sectors, thus, extending the analysis of Bongiovanni et al (2022) and Del Prete and Stefani (2022) focused only on the banking sector.…”

“…The same outcome is also found on the subsample of NLNP (Model 4). This greater increase of WoBs in the financial sector is supported by the neo-institutional theory, according to which sectors characterized by greater riskiness and uncertainty, such as finance, may adopt imitative behavior to a greater extent than other sectors (Bongiovanni et al , 2022).…”

“…Other works focus on the relationship between WoBs and the ethical and sustainability performance of companies, such as reducing managerial opportunism, disclosing social responsibility, reducing financial misconduct (Arnaboldi et al, 2021;Ullah et al, 2022;Zalata et al, 2022Zalata et al, , 2019. Most contributions, therefore, focus on the economic benefits associated with the introduction of quotas, while few articles study the spillover effects that this policy has on boards of directors not directly affected by gender quotas (Bongiovanni et al, 2022). Moreover, those investigating the role of spillover effects focus mainly on the presence of vertical spillovers, i.e.…”

“…While the majority of empirical papers on gender quotas in the financial sector are mainly addressed toward the effects on firms financial performance (Cardillo et al , 2021; Kinateder et al , 2021; Mateos de Cabo et al , 2012). We mention only those of Del Prete and Stefani (2022) and Bongiovanni et al (2022) that analyze the presence of horizontal spillover effects in the banking sector. Furthermore, the analysis of changes in the percentage of WoBs in the financial industry provides us with some insights into the size of the effects of the law in a particular and relevant sector, which is characterized by a strong masculine culture and increased instability and riskiness, manifested especially after the financial crisis.…”

“…To the best of our knowledge, there are only two other contributions investigating horizontal spillovers but focusing only on the banking sector (Bongiovanni et al , 2022; Del Prete and Stefani, 2022). The present paper fills a gap by investigating whether gender quotas in Italy have produced horizontal spillover effects on companies not directly affected by the law by extending the analysis to all sectors, and, thus, generalizing the already existing contributions that focus only on the banking sector (Bongiovanni et al , 2022; Del Prete and Stefani, 2022).…”