Why are there so few Women CEOs? Gender biases in the careers of executives

• In Event: 2356 - Managers' Bias and Employees' Bias-reduction Strategies

Abstract

Despite the reversal of the gender gap in the education system, the top ranks of the business world are still predominantly a male domain. In 2017, only around five percent of the CEOs of large, public U.S. companies were women. This suggests that the main selection effects occur after schooling, in the businesses themselves. In this paper, we focus on the last step in the pipeline to become a CEO: the promotion from director to CEO. Since the year 2000, the percentage of female CEOs has increased from 1% to 5% percent, while the percentage of female directors has increased from 9% to 20%. We study the conditions that determine the hiring of female directors and top executives by situating the hiring decision in the firm’s context. We propose that gender biases apparent in a firm are the product of past experiences of directors. When directors have been employed in the past at firms with a high share of female directors and executives, and make hiring decisions at a new firm, they will bring gender-egalitarian attitudes with them, thus influencing these hiring decisions in favor of women. We find evidence of such an effect using a large dataset of hiring decision at public and private U.S. companies.

Authors

• Benjamin Elbers, Columbia University

• Mathijs de Vaan, UC Berkeley

• Thomas A. DiPrete, Columbia University