Seminar Series in Management Science and Quantitative Economics

Ruth Mateos and Ricardo Gimeno
Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros

Contributions to the study of gender diversity on boards of directors

Wednesday 30th of November, 2011, from 1330 to 1500
Colegio Universitario de Estudios Financieros
Serrano Anguita 8, Madrid, 28004
Sala de Seminarios (Aula 12)

This seminar is composed of two research papers. The objective is to find evidence of gender discrimination on the boards of directors of the large Spanish firms on one hand, and of European banks on the other. The first paper concentrates on the analysis of observable factors related to the presence of women on boards and their possible relationship with different types of discrimination. To do this, we analyse the gender composition (in 2005 and 2008) of the boards of directors of the top 1,000 Spanish companies. We found that the mean percentage of women has grown from 6.6 per cent to 8.6 per cent. When seeking to identify possible causes of female under-representation, we opt to study determinants on the demand rather than the supply side. Supply-side determinants relate to the tendency of women to participate less in the labour market and to their relative lack of long-term career commitment when compared with men. However, survey data are likely to be biased by the self selection of those women who wish to “showcase” their successful careers. Besides, once a woman has reached the top executive rank, it is reasonable to assume that such supply-side differences are minimized and that such men and women are likely to be similar, sharing a high level of job motivation and lofty career ambitions. Hence, additional causes on the demand side should be explored.

The second paper investigates the gender diversity of the corporate board of banks in the European Union and tries to identify organizational characteristics that could be predictive of women’s presence on bank’s boards. We identify three factors that play a particularly important role in defining bank board gender diversity. First, banks with lower risk are the ones with higher proportion of women. Second, banks with larger boards have a higher proportion of women on its boards in part due to the fact that diversity in gender has been introduced largely in tandem with increases in the number of directors. Finally, banks that have a growth orientation are more prone to include women on their board, since women are often appointed to leadership positions under critical organizational circumstances.

Ruth Mateos de Cabo is an associate professor in Marketing Research at the University CEU San Pablo in Madrid, and assistant profesor in Statistics at the CUNEF. She earned her PhD in Business Administration at the University CEU San Pablo, Madrid (Spain). Her research areas are gender economics, corporate governance with a focus on board of directors, discrimination on the labour market and implications of chaos theory and complexity in business and management.
She is author of several articles, and she has co-presented various reports at different congresses, such as, Conference on Board Diversity and Economic Performance (Copenhagen Business School, 2011), Gender Economics Cycle, (Banco de España, 2009), 5th European Consortium for Political Research General Conference (Potsdam Univesität, 2009), 10th Women’s World Conference (UCM, 2008).

Ricardo Gimeno is an Economist at the Research Department of Banco de España. He has a degree in Business Administration and a Ph.D. by Universidad Pontificia Comillas (ICADE). He also teaches Spanish Financial System in CUNEF’s Master of Finance and Quantitative models in ICADE’s Master of Research in Economics and Business Administration.
His research interests include corporate governance, financial markets, and finantial position of households and corporations. He has publiched in several journals including Corporate Governance, Journal of Banking and Finance, or Computational Statistics.

Para confirmar asistencia y para cualquier asunto relacionado con el Seminario contactar con Prof. Dídac Ruiz-Hernández
(d.ruiz@cunef.du)