Gender diverse boards a goal worthwhile pursuing? – A critical literature review and reflection on future research

The ever-present topic of gender inequality has been on the agenda of policymakers around the globe (Ford and Pande 2011). The lack of female representation on corporate boards correspondingly raised the attention of scholars (Hillman et al. 2007), practitioners as well as civil society. It seems to represent one of the important columns to build up gender equality in society (Chizema, Kamuriwo, and Shinozawa 2015). Although electoral quotas for women existed in the 1970ies only for a handful of countries, nowadays they are implemented in more than 130 countries all over the world. (Meier 2013) Corporate board quotas have also started to increase in the last decades, especially in Europe. (Hughes, Paxton, and Krook 2017) That explains why a lot of research has been dedicated to women on boards of corporations. Although a vast majority of research has been done on the characteristics of women on boards (Gamba and Goldstein 2009; Ruigrok, Peck, and Tacheva 2007; Singh and Vinnicombe 2004; Zelechowski and Bilimoria 2004), as well as on the impact female board members have on the (financial or economic) performance of a corporation (Bear, Rahman, and Post 2010; Reddy and Jadhav 2019) there has been little research on the effect a gender diverse board has on the corporation in general. Female board members may contribute to issues of recruitment, retention, development and so which then contribute to the advancement of women in executive management. (Bilimoria 2006) That supports that female participation in executive management e.g. the compensation committee leads to equality in terms of compensation for both genders (Elkinawy and Stater 2011). Companies with more women on the board tend to have more women in executive management (Matsa and Miller 2011). It is argued that these, executive managers have the leadership position to make key employment decisions (Stainback, Kleiner, and Skaggs 2016). However, are there trickle-down effects to lower management levels? Kirsch and Wrohlich identified in their study trickle-down effects from the supervisory board to the executive board in Germany (Kirsch and Wrohlich 2020). However what is with the top, middle and lower management? Does a gender diverse board contribute towards an overall gender equality in a corporation? This paper aims first to review the literature on the consequences of gender diversity in organizations in order to understand what aspects scholars focused on so far, and whether and why diversity in the board room is a goal worthwhile pursuing in connection with gender equality outcomes for a corporation according to their research. The second aim is to identify and describe the gap regarding board diversity and its impact on gender equality for a corporation. This leads to a broad research agenda and a research plan to fill this gap in academic literature. Key words: gender board composition, women on boards, gender equality, gender diverse boards