Sumit Agarwal is Professor of Finance at the National University of Singapore. This post is based on a paper authored by Professor Agarwal; Wenlan Qian, Associate Professor of Finance at the National University of Singapore; David Reeb, Professor of Finance at the National University of Singapore; and Tien Foo Sing, Associate Professor of Finance at the National University of Singapore.
Studies have shown that firms benefit from corporate boards comprising men and women. Yet in 2014, women’s share of board seats in developed economies averaged 16.7 percent, varying from 3 percent in Japan to 19 percent in the US, and 30 percent in France. There is a gender glass ceiling in board representation. But women can overcome it, and some do.
In our paper, Playing the Boys’ Game: Golf Buddies and Board Diversity, forthcoming in the American Economic Review: Papers and Proceedings, We explore the role of informal networks and gender ceiling in the executive labor market using data on golf games. Specifically, we study whether women who play golf—a largely male-dominated sport—are also more likely to serve on the board of directors of publicly listed companies.
