Corporate executives managing some of the largest public companies in the U.S. are shaped by their daughters. When a firm's CEO has a daughter, the corporate social responsibility rating is about 9.1% higher, compared to a median firm. The results are robust to confronting several sources of...

In this paper we investigate the state of the art of women representation in Italian corporate boards, trying also to assess its determinants. We find that female presence still concerns the minority of companies and a small number of women. Moreover, female directorship is associated to some...

Women in the workforce are key to healthy economies, but this does not mean that adding more women to the board will necessarily increase shareholder value or that the financial crisis would not have happened if Lehman Brothers had been Lehman Sisters. Negative stereotypes may be one reason...

This study examines whether and how female directors enhance innovation performance. Based on a sample of U.S. firms, this study shows that firms with more female directors on boards present a more pronounced positive association between R&D and future firm performance (measured by earnings and...

Women on corporate boards have been the subject of an abundant literature (theoretical and empirical) in many countries, mainly in the United States, in the United Kingdom and in Scandinavian countries. Main results show an average slow progress and relatively low number of women on corporate...

We examine gender diversity, its impact on firm performance and earnings quality and particularly whether a critical number of female directors are required to empower them to best fulfil their duties on corporate boards. The extant literature shows a positive association exists between...

When board gender quotas clash with gender stereotypes prevailing within an organization, do they trigger backlash and lead to worse female labor market outcomes? We examine staggered adoptions of quotas in Europe and document a significant drop in the share of female employment. Applying...

We study the long-term effect of gender quotas in India, the first country with strong patriarchal norms to mandate female directors. Five years after the reform, female director appointments increase from less than 10% to over 20%. Almost half of the firms appoint and retain female directors...