Suchergebnisse

Arguments for increasing gender diversity on boards of directors by gender quotas range from ensuring equal opportunity to improving firm performance. The introduction of gender quotas in a number of countries has increased female representation on boards. Current research does not justify gender quotas on grounds of economic efficiency. In many countries the number of women in top executive positions is limited, and it is not clear from the evidence that quotas lead to a larger pool of female top executives, who are the main pipeline for boards of directors. Thus, other supplementary policies may be necessary if politicians want to increase the number of women in senior management positions.

We analyze the impact of family-friendly policies on women?s career breaks due to childbirth in Denmark and Sweden. In both countries, the labour force attachment of mothers is high, and more than 90% of the women return to work after childbirth. Sweden and Denmark are culturally similar and share the same type of welfare state ideology, but differ remarkably in pursued family policies. The impact of family policy variables on the probability of returning to the labour market is estimated using a duration model approach. Our results show that economic incentives and leave periods of the fathers affect the behaviour of mothers in both countries. However, family policy instruments are found to have a much larger impact on Swedish mothers? behaviour compared to Danish women. We explain this finding by the fact that family-friendly policies in Sweden have focused much more on flexible leave schemes and on the shared responsibilities of the parents than in Denmark.

An analysis of the effect of children and career interruptions on the family gap is based on Danish longitudinal data covering the years 1980–95. The estimated model controls for unobserved time‐constant heterogeneity. The results show that, when controlling for unobserved heterogeneity, the negative effect of children on mothers' wages disappears. The main effect of children seems to be loss of human capital accumulation during childbirth periods; apart from this, there is no indication that children have long‐term effects on the earnings potential of their mothers, holding experience constant.