The Gender Diversity in the Board of Directors, among Top-management and Company Performance

The business case for females in top corporate positions draws particular attention nowadays, especially as several countries have introduced quotas for women on the board of directors. Nevertheless, few papers study the impact of female supervisors and executives separately. Thus, this work focuses on the effect of women sitting on both managerial and supervisory boards on company performance covering the gap in the existing literature and providing evidence from Russia. Based on data on publicly traded companies in Russia and using conventional panel data techniques (fixed- and random-effects models, quantile regressions, 2SLS estimator, dynamic models) we have found that mainly women on the supervisory board influence outcomes of firms in distress or average-performing firms in a positive way, possibly because they are believed to be tougher monitors, while for top-performing companies it is beneficial to appoint females as a supervisor and a manager at the same time, possibly because this helps to maintain a good level of communication between the two tiers.