1. Gender quota inside the boardroom: Female directors as new key players?
Pr. Antoine Rebérioux (Univ. Paris Diderot, LADYSS)
Dr. Gwenaël Roudaut (Ecole Polytechnique)
ASSA – AEA Conference
Chicago, 2017
Good morning everybody, I am G. R. associate researcher at Ecole Polytechnique
With my co-author Antoine Reberioux we analyze the implementation of the French gender quota in the boardroom.

2. Women inside the boardroom
Low representation of women inside the boardroom
From R. B. Adams (2016) Women on boards: The superheroes of tomorrow? The Leadership Quaterly, 27(3),
Why are we interested in this question?
Gender diversity inside the boardroom is not only a question of corporate governance but first of all a social question. It should promote a more gender balanced economy by provinding some models to young women and also promoting equal opportunity based on experiences and qualifications.
Moreover, gender diversity should improve the quality of the corporate governance in many ways.
But without any public policy the share of women inside the boardroom is so low in 2009, the share of female directors was under 10 %!
Why foster female representation inside the boardroom?
Society
Gender equality
Role model
Firm
Quality of board
Glass-ceiling

3. Voluntary vs. legislative approaches
Code of corporate Governance
Quota
From R. B. Adams and T. Kirchmaier (2015) Barriers to Boardrooms, Working paper, SSRN
Mixed effects on corporate governance and performance
Two appraoches are competing at least in Europe
The volontary approache and the legislative approach
It is really hard to measure the real impact of gender diversity
Fist even with an natural experiment there is an endogeneous biais
Director selection
Board functioning
Firm performance
Regulation on gender

4. Contribution
Do Male and Female directors have the same role inside the boardroom before and after a gender quota?
Do Male and female directors have the same characteristics?
Director selection
Do Male and female directors have the same role (committes)?
Board functioning
Director fees as a measure of director value
Overall role of director
The objective of the paper is to understand what are the costs and the benefits of a gender quota beyond the diversity performance such as Ferreura et al do on the
Explain the gender fees gap before/after the quota within the same boardroom

5. The French case – Quasi-natural experiment – Zimmerman Copé Law
2010
Debate
January 2011
Adoption
2014
20%
2017
40%
Firms: revenue > 50 M€ and > 500 employees
Stable board size: Substituting men by women
Fees fully disclosed at director level in the annual reports
The French quota. The debate at the parlamient was in 2010 and the law finally passed in January 2011 with a first target in 2014 of 20% and a second target of 40% in 2017.
On the graoh you see the

6. Data Sample: French SBF120 companies
Two periods: before ( ) and after ( )
Directors : individual characteristics, education, professional experience, role inside the boardroom
Between 3 and 18 directors, around 7 meetings per year
Supervisory board (24%), One–tier board without duality (24%)
Committees :
111 firms, 1,498 directors and 7,904 director-firm-year obs. (exclusion of insiders, state’ and employees’ representatives)
Audit
Compensation/Nomination
Advice
% Firms 97 95 60

7. Directors’ fees Director fees: fixed and variable, depending on
function (chairman, vice-chairman, …)
committees
Attendance (per meeting)
SBF120
Women : 45 k€
Men : 43 k€
(in €)
Strong divergence among firms to compensate directors (size, board structure)
Ratio of director’ fees with respect to the average director fees

8. Oaxaca-Blinder decomposition
Factors explaining wage difference
Segregation within positions
Discrimination
Unobservable characteristics

9. Gender gap inside the boardroom
Gender gap = individual characteristics (1/3) + monitoring committees (2/3)

10. What happens to seasoned directors?
Still an inner glass-ceiling to reach audit membership and chairing

11. Conclusion Before quota After quota Whole period Seasoned females 3.7%
Before quota
After quota
Whole period
Seasoned females
3.7%
2.3%
2.6%
Unseasoned females -
12%
All
5.7% 5%
Pools of directors slightly different and Inner glass ceiling for major committees
positional gender segregation
What is the impact on corporate performances? Is-it a short-term or long-term issue? What is the temporal dynamic?
Investigate the costs and benefits of a gender quota on director selection and board functioning indicators –such as turnover in Ferreira et al. (2016) and board composition in Bøhren and Staubo (2014)

12. Difference in individual characteristics
More international and less connected through the Grande Ecole network
Fewer financial experts but younger people
More independent but less industry-expert
No predictable impact on corporate governance

13. Role inside the boardroom

14. Understanding directors’ fees