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

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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.

Keywords: Ownership Structure, Women, Board of Directors Composition, Substitution Effect, Board Committees

Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization – T.M., A.S., and H.B.; Methodology – T.M.; Writing – T.M., A.S., and H.B.; Investigation – T.M.; Funding Acquisition – T.M.; Resources – T.M.; Supervision – T.M.

Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.

Acknowledgements: This research is funded by the Jeanne et J.-Louis-Lévesque Chair in Financial Studies. The chair is located at the Faculty of Business Administration of the University of Moncton. Its role is to support research on topics of current problems in finance and to develop and promote various activities connected to the field of finance for the francophone and Acadian populations of Canada’s Atlantic Provinces.

JEL Classification: G34

Received: 24.11.2020
Accepted: 24.03.2021
Published online: 25.03.2021

How to cite this paper: Morris, T., Sodjahin, A., & Boubacar, H. (2021). Ownership structure and women on boards of directors of Canadian listed companies. Corporate Ownership & Control, 18(3), 120-135. https://doi.org/10.22495/cocv18i3art10