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Literature / resource Imported

Female Leadership and Gender Gap within Firms: Evidence from an Italian Board Reform

Italy · National · See the Italy profile

The authors evaluate a 2011 Italian law that installed a step-wise increase in gender quota that remains effective for three consecutive board renewals of listed limited liability firms. They link firm-level information on board membership and board election dates with detailed e

Details

Promoter
Agata Maida, Andrea Weber
Power domain
Economic Power
Methods / tools
Awareness-raising, Self-regulation
Keywords
female leadership, gender equity, board reform, gender equity via law

Context

This practice evaluates Italy's 2011 law introducing progressive gender quotas for corporate boards of listed and state-owned limited liability companies, applied across three consecutive board renewals. A study combined board-membership data with Social Security employment and earnings records to assess the reform's wider effects.

Objectives

To determine whether increasing women's presence on corporate boards produced spillover effects on gender equity elsewhere in the firm, particularly among top executives and top earners.

Results

The reform substantially increased female representation on corporate boards, but the study found only moderate and imprecisely estimated spillover effects on women's representation among top executives or top earners within firms over a four-year evaluation period.

Conclusions

Board-level gender quotas alone appear insufficient to meaningfully close broader within-firm gender gaps in leadership and pay, at least within the timeframe studied.

Implementation
Indicative cost
Low (< €50k)
Time to results
Medium (1–3 years)

Commonly funded by

National / regional programmes CERV — Citizens, Equality, Rights and Values

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Data sources

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