Ownership structure and women on boards of directors of Canadian listed companies

Abstract

This study examines how the structure of shareholder ownership (i.e., management, external blockholders, and board ownership) affects the presence of women on boards of directors. The results of an analysis of a sample of listed Canadian companies for the period 2007-2015, controlling for endogeneity, indicate that the proportion of women sitting on a firm’s board of directors is influenced by its shareholding structure, thus, supporting the view that the two governance mechanisms of gender diversity and shareholder structure can substitute for each other. The results also show that there is a curvilinear relationship between a company’s ownership structure and the proportion of women on its board of directors and audit committee. Indeed, findings show that as the concentration of company ownership increases, the proportion of women on boards of directors decreases to a threshold, following which we observe an increase in the proportion of women sitting on boards of directors and particularly on audit committees