Gender Quota inside the Boardroom: Female Directors as New Key Players?

Abstract

This paper examines whether women’s situation within French boards has improved following theadoption of a board-level gender quota in 2011. To do so, we focus on the individual role of femaledirectors as proxied by their fees. Our sample includes the listed companies belonging to the SBF120index over the 2006-2014 period. We first show that the quota has succeeded in opening the doors ofboardrooms to new, unseasoned female directors (not present on the director labor market before theregulation). These unseasoned female directors have distinctive characteristics (in terms of independence,experience, age, nationality, etc.) as compared to other board members. More importantly, weshow that women, whether unseasoned or seasoned, experience an inner glass ceiling, with “positional”gender segregation within French boards. In particular, companies have failed so far to open the accessof the most important board committees (namely monitoring committees: audit, compensation andnomination) to women. It results in a within-firm gender fees gap of 5%. Overall, the quota has ratheramplified this segregation process, with an increase in the average within-firm gender fees gap.

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