The Glass Ceilig obstacle and company's performance : panel study analysis

Abstract

This paper examines the impact of women's presence in top management positions (CEOs, CFOs, and Board of Director Members) on a company's financial performance. Though women remain highly underrepresented in senior management positions due to the Glass Ceiling obstacle, few psychological and behavioral studies examining male's and female's leadership styles, heterogeneous gender-diverse groups, and top manager's impact on middle management class create a reasonable background to think that women senior managers may improve company's performance. We test this hypothesis by doing a panel regression analysis on the US top 716 firms during the 2006-2018 period. The study finds that scientific evidence of women board members positively impacting on the company's performance exists. However, for CEO and CFO positions, gender is found to have a non-significant impact on a company's performance.