Women-Led Firms and the Gender Gap in Top Executive Jobs
By Linda A. Bell. Social Science Research Network, 2005
186 citations recorded by the source corpus.
Using data on Executive Compensation from Standard and Poor's ExecuComp, this paper explores the gender gap in top executive jobs and the effect of women CEOs, Chairs, and Directors on the pay of other women executives. The results show a narrowing of the uncorrected gender pay gap from the mid-1990s. Women top executives earn between 8% to 25% less than male executives after controlling for differences in company size, occupational title, and industry. The magnitude of the gender pay gap is statistically related to the gender of the Chief Executive and Corporate Board Chair. Women CEO and Board Chairs bring more top women and at higher pay than is found in non-women-led firms. Specifically, female executives in women-led firms earn between 10-20% more than comparable executive women in male-led firms and are between 3-18% more likely to be among the highest five paid executives in these firms as well. The paper thereby provides strong empirical evidence that women leaders are associated with positive outcomes for women executives in substantive and important ways.
Subfields: Accounting, Economics and Econometrics, Gender Studies
View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/592edaf2554752994a4064c3378805af566edc49
How researchers see this paper
The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.
In Accounting
- Geoffrey A. Tate
- Liu Yang
- Marianne Bertrand
- Helen Spiropoulos
- M. Bugeja
- Francine D. Blau
- Zoltan P. Matolcsy
- Lawrence M. Kahn
In Economics and Econometrics
- Claudia Goldin
- Lawrence M. Kahn
- Francine D. Blau
- Marianne Bertrand
- Lawrence F. Katz
- Liu Yang
- Helen Spiropoulos
- M. Bugeja
In Gender Studies
- Lawrence M. Kahn
- Francine D. Blau
- Marianne Bertrand
- Claudia Goldin
- Geoffrey A. Tate
- Liu Yang
- Helen Spiropoulos
- M. Bugeja
Citations in the corpus
- Do Women in Top Management Affect Firm Performance? A Panel Study of 2500 Danish Firms (2006, unknown): “A recent study by Bell (2005) based on a large sample of US firms find that women in top management (female top CEO or board members) have a positive effect on the payment of the executives of the firms, and further, these firms also tend to have a higher proportion of women at lower management…”
- The Gender Wage Gap: Extent, Trends, and Explanations (2017, background): “…(Ginther and Kahn 2014; and Ceci et al. 2014).58 The possibility of discrimination is further suggested by studies in both the corporate world (Bell 2005; Shin 2012; Kurtulus and Tomaskovic-Devey 2012) and academia (Ehrenberg et al. 2012), finding that women at the lower ranks fare better (in…”
- Dynamics of the Gender Gap for Young Professionals in the Financial and Corporate Sectors (2010, background): “5 See also Bell (2005), who finds that women-led firms (e.g., firms where the CEO or the chairman of the board is a women) have a higher share of female executives in the other “top five paid” positions and remunerate these female executives more than non-women led firms do.”
- Is there a gender gap in CEO compensation (2012, methodology): “Bell (2005) also documents that the gender pay gap for female executives reduces when a firm is led by a female CEO.”
- Female leadership and gender equity: Evidence from plant closure (2015, result): “Most related to our results, Matsa and Miller (2011b) and Bell (2005) show that women top executives earn more in female-led firms.”
- Do Female Executives Make a Difference? The Impact of Female Leadership on Gender Gaps and Firm Performance (2019, unknown): “Bell (2005) studies the impact of female leadership in US firms but only on executives’ wages.”