Discussion paper

DP10228 Do Female Executives Make a Difference? The Impact of Female Leadership on Gender Gaps and Firm Performance

We analyze a matched employer-employee panel data set and find that female leadership has a positive effect on female wages at the top of the distribution, and a negative one at the bottom. Moreover, performance in firms with female leadership increases with the share of female workers. This evidence is consistent with a model where female executives are better equipped at interpreting signals of productivity from female workers. This suggests substantial costs of under-representation of women at the top: for example, if women became CEOs of firms with at least 20% female employment, sales per worker would increase 6.7%.

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Citation

Flabbi, L, F Schivardi and A Moro (2014), ‘DP10228 Do Female Executives Make a Difference? The Impact of Female Leadership on Gender Gaps and Firm Performance‘, CEPR Discussion Paper No. 10228. CEPR Press, Paris & London. https://cepr.org/publications/dp10228