Gender Diversity in the Boardrooms of Public Companies in Poland: Changes and Implications

Abstract

Gender diversity in management became one of the “hot topics” in recent years. The literature reports examples of research proving all possible effects (i.e. both positive and negative together with lack of influence) of gender diversity among top managers to the company performance. (Research Aims). Therefore, the aim of our research is to find out the women share on boards of companies listed on the Warsaw Stock Exchange in the years 2010-2016, and to check how the changes in the gender structure of the management boards influence the company performance. (Research hypothesis). There is no essential gender diversity on the boards of Polish public companies, and change in the management structure does not affect the situation of the companies. (Method). In our investigation we use data provided by Notoria Serwis, and apply taxonomic measures together with dynamic and correlation analysis. (Conclusions). Our results show that it would be impossible to obtain the 40% parity level on boards till 2020 since increasing tendency of women representation in upper management is rather slow. There is no significant positive correlation between changes in the women share on boards and financial performance of companies, we observe only single negative significant relations.

Keywords

• gender diversity
• women in boardrooms
• chairwomen
• public company
• financial performance
• taxonomic measure