Do women-managers influence the financial situation of companies listed on the WSE?

There are many barriers that keep women from rising beyond a certain level in the professional hierarchy. Therefore, some countries introduce quotas which require companies to fill 20-30% of board seats with women. Gender diversity in the boardrooms became one of the “hot topic” in recent years. Diversity in managerial bodies and its impact on the financial performance of companies are widely discussed by researchers and politicians. The literature reports examples of research examining all possible effects (i.e. both positive and negative together with lack of influence) of gender diversity among top managers on company performance.

Therefore, the aim of our research is to identify women's share on boards of companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange (WSE) in the years 2010-2016, and how changes in the gender structure of management boards influence company performance. In our investigation we use data provided by Norotia Serwis, and apply taxonomic measures together with dynamic and correlation analysis. The situation of companies is measured applying the classic and vector synthetic measures of development and the relative development indicator, which are evaluated for 15 economic sectors selected in WSE in years 2010-2013.

Our results show that it would be impossible to obtain the 40% parity level on boards until 2020 since the rate of increase in women's representation in upper management is rather low. There is no significant positive correlation between changes in women's share on boards and financial performance of companies. We observe only negative significant relationships.

Keywords: gender board diversity, women in boardrooms, chairwomen, public company, financial performance, taxonomic measure