Gender Quotas and Support for Women in Board Elections

"Gender Quotas and Support for Women in Board Elections"

(only via Zoom Meeting)

Marina Gertsberg - University of Melbourne

Abstract 

We study shareholder support for corporate board nominees before and after the 2018 California gender quota. Pre-quota, new female nominees received greater support than new male nominees, consistent with women being held to a higher standard. Post-quota, as the number of women increased, support for new (mandated) female nominees decreased to the same level of, but not lower than, the support that new male nominees enjoy. Still, share prices reacted negatively to the quota. We show that this reaction was concentrated in firms that did not turn over their least-supported male directors when adding women to comply with the quota.

Bio

Marina joined the University of Melbourne in 2022. Previously she was a Lecturer at Monash University. She received her Ph.D. from Maastricht University. A central theme in Marina's research is that it is enough for a few people who are gatekeepers to be biased against women to introduce a gender bias into the whole system. In her work, she aims to understand where the gender bias is in the system and how to redress it.