Direction de la Science, de la technologie et de l'innovation
Gender diversity in senior management and firm productivity
Evidence from nine OECD countries
This paper investigates the link between gender diversity in senior management and
firm-level productivity. For this purpose, it constructs a novel cross-country dataset
with information on firms’ senior management group and other firm characteristics,
covering both publicly listed and unlisted firms in manufacturing and non-financial
market services across nine OECD countries. The main result from the analysis is that
productivity gains from increasing gender diversity in senior management are highest
among firms with low initial diversity. Increasing the female share to the sample
average of 20% in firms with initially lower shares would increase aggregate productivity
by around 0.6%. This suggests that improving women’s access to senior management positions
matters not only for equity but could yield significant productivity gains.