New Zealand has the reputation as a pioneering nation in policy reform- it was the first to introduce a comprehensive no fault based system for accident compensation, it had an early form of the welfare state, it embraced the economic reforms of the 1980s, and it was the first country to allow...

Public companies are besieged with requests to add women to their boards. Corporate directors are trained to listen carefully and advised to evaluate evidence. Most would welcome reasonable requests to advance gender diversity to their boards. Many, however, are frustrated by the sheer volume...

The push for gender diversity on public companies' boards has been gaining traction. Advocacy groups, institutional investors, regulators and companies themselves have all recognized the need for more diverse boards. However, gender parity is still absent from most public companies' boards, and...

Gender diversity on corporate boards is a popular topic both in academic and in business publications, but the focus is typically on ‘how' rather than ‘why'. This paper argues that the motivation for seeking to increase the number of women on boards necessarily affects the means of achieving...

Purpose – Theory suggests that the market for corporate control, which constitutes an important external governance mechanism, may substitute for internal governance. Consistent with this notion, using a novel measure of takeover vulnerability primarily based on state legislation, we...

This article explores whether the progress of women onto boards in Australia continues to be ‘glacial’ and studies the cultural and structural determinants contributing to the undoubtedly slow progress. The representation of women on boards should broadly reflect their workforce...

This paper reports on an empirical analysis of 42,094 public/private companies in China and 21 Eastern European countries to grasp the actual state and determinants of board gender diversity in emerging market firms. We confirmed that firms in these countries are comparable to those in advanced...

We study the impact of a principles-based (i.e., comply or explain) approach to female representation on corporate boards. In contrast to the existing evidence on mandatory diversity regulation, we find that those firms most likely to be affected by this principles-based regulation exhibit...

We examine how boardroom gender diversity reforms impact the monitoring role of institutional investors. Using reforms from 25 countries that aim to improve gender diversity on boards, we find that the reforms increase the association between institutional ownership and subsequent female...