Gender Quota and Inequalities inside the Boardroom

Antoine Rebérioux (1) , Gwenael Roudaut (2)

1 EconomiX - EconomiX
2 X-DEP-ECO - Département d'Économie de l'École Polytechnique

– This paper examines the evolution of within-board gender inequality following the adoption of a board-level gender quota for French listed companies in 2011. We show that the quota has succeeded in opening the doors of boardrooms to new, unseasoned women, who present distinctive characteristics. However, conditional on these characteristics, we provide evidence that female new comers are less likely that their male counterparts (both seasoned and new comers) to hold key positions within boards (namely, audit, compensation and nominating committee membership and chairing). This positional segregation is the main driver of a within-firm gender fees gap that amounts to 5.5% post-quota, as against 3.3% pre-quota.

Mots clés: gender inequality; board gender quota; board committees; gender fees gap

Domaines: Économie et finance quantitative [q-fin]

Antoine Rebérioux, Gwenael Roudaut. Gender Quota and Inequalities inside the Boardroom. 2017. ⟨hal-01618949⟩