IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bdi/opques/qef_174_13.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Women on corporate boards in Italy

Author

Listed:
  • Magda Bianco

    (Bank of Italy)

  • Angela Ciavarella

    (Consob)

  • Rossella Signoretti

    (Consob)

Abstract

We examine the presence of women in Italian corporate boards before the introduction of Law 120/2012. We consider all directors of publicly-traded firms in 2008-10 and investigate the potential determinants of having boards with gender-diverse representation and the correlation between female directorship and selected governance measures. Two different models emerge. In the majority of diverse boards at least one of the women has a family connection with the controlling shareholder: family-affiliated women are more frequently found in smaller companies, firms with a concentrated ownership, businesses that operate in the consumer sector and those with larger boards. By contrast, unaffiliated women are more common in widely held companies, companies with younger and more highly educated boards, those with a higher proportion of independent directors and those with fewer “connected” directors. With reference to governance-related outcomes, the number of board meetings is positively correlated with the presence of women on boards, while no difference is found between female and male directors in board meeting attendance.

Suggested Citation

  • Magda Bianco & Angela Ciavarella & Rossella Signoretti, 2013. "Women on corporate boards in Italy," Questioni di Economia e Finanza (Occasional Papers) 174, Bank of Italy, Economic Research and International Relations Area.
    • Handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_174_13
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.bancaditalia.it/pubblicazioni/qef/2013-0174/QEF_174.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Singh, Val & Terjesen, Siri & Vinnicombe, Susan, 2008. "Newly appointed directors in the boardroom:: How do women and men differ," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 26(1), pages 48-58, February.
    2. Adams, Renée B. & Ferreira, Daniel, 2009. "Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 94(2), pages 291-309, November.
    3. Agrawal, Anup & Knoeber, Charles R, 2001. "Do Some Outside Directors Play a Political Role?," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 44(1), pages 179-198, April.
    4. David A. Matsa & Amalia R. Miller, 2013. "A Female Style in Corporate Leadership? Evidence from Quotas," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 5(3), pages 136-169, July.
    5. Stephen Brammer & Andrew Millington & Stephen Pavelin, 2007. "Gender and Ethnic Diversity Among UK Corporate Boards," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 393-403, March.
    6. Paul Gompers & Joy Ishii & Andrew Metrick, 2003. "Corporate Governance and Equity Prices," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 118(1), pages 107-156.
    7. Renée B. Adams & Patricia Funk, 2012. "Beyond the Glass Ceiling: Does Gender Matter?," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 58(2), pages 219-235, February.
    8. Val Singh & Susan Vinnicombe & Phyl Johnson, 2001. "Women Directors on Top UK Boards," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 9(3), pages 206-216, July.
    9. Siri Terjesen & Val Singh, 2008. "Female Presence on Corporate Boards: A Multi-Country Study of Environmental Context," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 83(1), pages 55-63, November.
    10. Helen Kang & Mandy Cheng & Sidney J. Gray, 2007. "Corporate Governance and Board Composition: diversity and independence of Australian boards," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 15(2), pages 194-207, March.
    11. Niclas L. Erhardt & James D. Werbel & Charles B. Shrader, 2003. "Board of Director Diversity and Firm Financial Performance," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 11(2), pages 102-111, April.
    12. Ruth Mateos de Cabo & Ricardo Gimeno & María Nieto, 2012. "Gender Diversity on European Banks’ Boards of Directors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 109(2), pages 145-162, August.
    13. Val Singh & Susan Vinnicombe, 2004. "Why So Few Women Directors in Top UK Boardrooms? Evidence and Theoretical Explanations," Corporate Governance: An International Review, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 12(4), pages 479-488, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francesca di Donato & Delio Panaro & Sara Trucco, 2016. "Board Gender Diversity, Network and Firms’ Performance in the Italian Listed Companies," International Journal of Business and Management, Canadian Center of Science and Education, vol. 11(10), pages 332-332, September.
    2. Khandelwal, Chandni & Kumar, Satish & Madhavan, Vinodh & Pandey, Nitesh, 2020. "Do board characteristics impact corporate risk disclosures? The Indian experience," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 103-111.
    3. Silvia Del Prete & Maria Lucia Stefani, 2021. "Women as “gold dust”: Gender diversity in top boards and the performance of Italian banks," Economic Notes, Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena SpA, vol. 50(2), July.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Mehdi Nekhili & Hayette Gatfaoui, 2013. "Are Demographic Attributes and Firm Characteristics Drivers of Gender Diversity? Investigating Women’s Positions on French Boards of Directors," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 118(2), pages 227-249, December.
    2. Kent Baker, H. & Pandey, Nitesh & Kumar, Satish & Haldar, Arunima, 2020. "A bibliometric analysis of board diversity: Current status, development, and future research directions," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 232-246.
    3. Joanna Tyrowicz & Siri Terjesen & Jakub Mazurek, 2017. "All on board? New evidence on board gender diversity from a large panel of firms," GRAPE Working Papers 5, GRAPE Group for Research in Applied Economics.
    4. Levi, Maurice & Li, Kai & Zhang, Feng, 2014. "Director gender and mergers and acquisitions," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 28(C), pages 185-200.
    5. Shamsul Abdullah, 2014. "The causes of gender diversity in Malaysian large firms," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 18(4), pages 1137-1159, November.
    6. García Lara, Juan Manuel & García Osma, Beatriz & Mora, Araceli & Scapin, Mariano, 2017. "The monitoring role of female directors over accounting quality," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 45(C), pages 651-668.
    7. Mingzhu Wang & Elisabeth Kelan, 2013. "The Gender Quota and Female Leadership: Effects of the Norwegian Gender Quota on Board Chairs and CEOs," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 117(3), pages 449-466, October.
    8. Atif, Muhammad & Hossain, Mohammed & Alam, Md Samsul & Goergen, Marc, 2021. "Does board gender diversity affect renewable energy consumption?," Journal of Corporate Finance, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    9. Nguyen, Tuan & Nguyen, An & Nguyen, Mau & Truong, Thuyen, 2021. "Is national governance quality a key moderator of the boardroom gender diversity–firm performance relationship? International evidence from a multi-hierarchical analysis," International Review of Economics & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 73(C), pages 370-390.
    10. Rey Dang & Anne Françoise Bender & Marie José Scotto, 2014. "Women on French Corporate Board of Directors: How Do They Differ from their Male Counterparts?," Working Papers 2014-54, Department of Research, Ipag Business School.
    11. Irene Wei Kiong Ting & Wei-Kang Wang & Wen-Min Lu & Yun-Jung Chen, 2021. "Do female directors will have impact on corporate performance?," Review of Managerial Science, Springer, vol. 15(3), pages 611-631, April.
    12. Luong, Hoa & Khedmati, Mehdi & Nguyen, Lan Anh & Nigmonov, Asror & Ovi, Nafisa Zabeen & Shams, Syed, 2023. "CEO-director ties and board gender diversity: US evidence," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Finance, Elsevier, vol. 40(C).
    13. Nguyen, Thi Hong Hanh & Ntim, Collins G. & Malagila, John K., 2020. "Women on corporate boards and corporate financial and non-financial performance: A systematic literature review and future research agenda," International Review of Financial Analysis, Elsevier, vol. 71(C).
    14. Simona, Comi & Mara, Grasseni & Federica, Origo & Laura, Pagani, 2017. "Where Women Make The Difference. The Effects of Corporate Board Gender Quotas on Firms’ Performance across Europe," Working Papers 367, University of Milano-Bicocca, Department of Economics, revised 12 Jul 2017.
    15. Saeed, Abubakr & Belghitar, Yacine & Yousaf, Amna, 2016. "Firm-level determinants of gender diversity in the boardrooms: Evidence from some emerging markets," International Business Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(5), pages 1076-1088.
    16. Tyrowicz, Joanna & Terjesen, Siri & Mazurek, Jakub, 2020. "All on board? New evidence on board gender diversity from a large panel of European firms," European Management Journal, Elsevier, vol. 38(4), pages 634-645.
    17. Collins Ntim, 2015. "Board diversity and organizational valuation: unravelling the effects of ethnicity and gender," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 19(1), pages 167-195, February.
    18. Mijntje Lückerath-Rovers, 2013. "Women on boards and firm performance," Journal of Management & Governance, Springer;Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA), vol. 17(2), pages 491-509, May.
    19. repec:ipg:wpaper:2014-054 is not listed on IDEAS
    20. Hisham Farag & Chris Mallin, 2016. "The Impact of the Dual Board Structure and Board Diversity: Evidence from Chinese Initial Public Offerings (IPOs)," Journal of Business Ethics, Springer, vol. 139(2), pages 333-349, December.
    21. Mohsni, Sana & Otchere, Isaac & Shahriar, Saquib, 2021. "Board gender diversity, firm performance and risk-taking in developing countries: The moderating effect of culture," Journal of International Financial Markets, Institutions and Money, Elsevier, vol. 73(C).

    More about this item

    Keywords

    gender diversity; corporate governance; board of directors.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • G34 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Mergers; Acquisitions; Restructuring; Corporate Governance
    • G38 - Financial Economics - - Corporate Finance and Governance - - - Government Policy and Regulation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bdi:opques:qef_174_13. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bdigvit.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.