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Public Attention to Gender Equality and Board Gender Diversity

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2022

Mariassunta Giannetti Open the ORCID record for Mariassunta Giannetti [Opens in a new window]  and
Tracy Yue Wang
Mariassunta Giannetti*
Affiliation:
Stockholm School of Economics, CEPR, and ECGI
Tracy Yue Wang
Affiliation:
University of Minnesota Department of Finance wangx684@umn.edu
*
mariassunta.giannetti@hhs.se (corresponding author)
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Abstract

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We document that heightened public attention to gender equality is associated with an increase in board gender diversity. Improvements in diversity are more pronounced in firms with a corporate culture that is already sympathetic to gender equality. When public attention to gender equality increases, firms reach out to a larger pool of women, such as women without industry experience or outside their network, but female director appointments do not appear to be dilutive of the board’s skills. Instead, we observe less reliance on connections for director appointments and a decrease in the propensity to appoint connected men.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis , Volume 58 , Issue 2 , March 2023 , pp. 485 - 511
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution and reproduction, provided the original article is properly cited.
Copyright
© THE AUTHOR(S), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press on behalf of the Michael G. Foster School of Business, University of Washington

Footnotes

We thank an anonymous referee, Mara Faccio (the editor), Jonathan Karpoff, Karl Lins, Michelle Lowry, Ulrike Malmendier, Geoffrey Tate, Daniel Urban, Yuhai Xuan, and seminar participants at the American Finance Association, the European Finance Association, the Drexel LeBow Spring Seminar Series on Corporate Governance, Indiana University, Nova School of Business and Economics, the University of Minnesota, the University of Mannheim, the University of Kentucky, the University of Alabama, the University of Surrey, the University of Utah, and the University of Birmingham for comments. Giannetti gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Swedish House of Finance, the Nasdaq Nordic Foundation, the Jan Wallander and Tom Hedelius Foundation, and the Riksbankens Jubileumsfond.

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