Corporate Boards and Gender Quotas: A Review of Literature

Legislative regulations for gender quotas are increasingly being enacted on the corporate boards in numerous countries. Research focused on this topic since 2003 when Norway passed the first law concerning the composition of board of directors and women’s proportion in it. The purpose of this paper is to present a review of the literature on gender quotas applied on corporate boards and their impact in different aspects. Using Scopus database, the authors reviewed a body of studies and analyzed those that demonstrated a correlation with the impact on firm’s environmental and social performance, those that demonstrated a diffusion of gender equality across the firm levels and those that focused on individual perceptions. Our results highlight that even though there is a positive impact of gender quotas there is still lack of studies using primary data and addressing the specific research field from non-financial perspective in order to approach deeper the subject. This could be a trigger for future researchers. Also, our findings regarding the benefits of gender diversity in corporate boards can be used to expand efforts to promote gender equality in the workplace.