Tokenism or realism? Gender inclusion in corporate boards

Abstract

PurposeThe paper investigates how the interplay of women-specific human and social capital factors with ownership structure impacts her chances to get director level appointment in the light of recent amendments to the Indian statute.Design/methodology/approachThe strength of the study lies in fitting a logistic regression model to the unique hand collected data on women director characteristics from 100 large listed Indian firms.FindingsCounter intuitive findings reveal negative effects of social capital on appointment of independent women directors. This relationship gets reversed when social capital is moderated by ownership structure.Social implicationsCompanies may be influenced to take into cognizance the underlying gender biases prevailing in the highest echelons of management and employ un-gendered fair selection practices for board level appointments in order to progress towards gender balanced corporate boards.Originality/valueThe paper is a first of its kind that combines aspects of human capital and ownership structure using Indian data. By developing several new proxy variables to enrich the construct of social capital it contributes to the corporate governance literature and lastly, through main and interaction effects, the paper offers a deeper understanding about the impact of endogenous factors of corporate boards on women's representation at leadership levels in India.