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

Abstract

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%.

Keywords: executives’ gender, firm performance, gender gap, glass ceiling, statistical discrimination

JEL Classification: J16, J7, M12, M5