• Corpus ID: 3894412

1 Are All Welcome Aboard : Does the Gender of Directors Matter ?

@inproceedings{SchwartzZiv20111AA,
  title={1 Are All Welcome Aboard : Does the Gender of Directors Matter ?},
  author={Miriam Schwartz-Ziv},
  year={2011}
}

• Miriam Schwartz-Ziv
• Published 2011
• Economics

I examine boards that are relatively gender-balanced (a third of their directors are women): boards of business firms in which the Israeli government holds shares. First, I do not find a significant association between the proportion of women directors on board and financial performance. Second, I find that women directors tend to be on the committees that discuss audit issues, as opposed to business issues, although their presence in board meetings, in which no additional appointment mechanism exists, significantly increases the likelihood that business issues be discussed, as opposed to audit issues. Last, I find that a dual critical mass – defined as one which consists of at least three women directors and at least three men directors in attendance – most enhances the activeness of boards: Boards with such a dual critical mass were more than twice as likely as boards without one both to take an initiative (e.g., suggest which action should be taken) and to request further information or an update. 1 The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Finance Department) and Harvard (The Program on Corporate governance at Harvard Law School), e-mail: [e-mail]. I am very grateful to Prof. Eugene Kandel and Prof. Michael Weisbach, the co-advisors of my doctoral dissertation, upon which this paper is based. I thank the executive and non-executive employees of the Government Companies Authority of Israel, who allowed me both formally and practically, to conduct this research. I also thank the companies studied, which kindly provided me with private and sensitive data. In addition, I thank the following people who shared their thoughts and advice with us at different stages of the preparation of this paper: Alon Eizenberg, Ronel Elul, Daniel Schwartz, Schraga Schwartz, and Tammar Zilber. Last, I thank the Israeli Ministry of Science and Technology, and Hebrew University’s School of Business Administration, for financial support.