Breaking Glass: Meta-Analytic Resolution of the Performance Effects of Women in Strategic Leadership

How does the impact of female representation in strategic leadership positions (top management teams, boards of directors, CEO positions) affect firm performance? Despite research efforts spanning several decades, the answer to this basic question is still elusive, not least due to the inconsistencies in findings reported in the literature, which is fragmented along theories, paradigms, and research contexts. Using meta-analytic techniques on a sample of 151 original studies (which provide evidence from 35 different countries and over 500,000 firms), we synthesize this research and extend it by testing several new hypotheses. We find that female occupancy of strategic leadership positions has a small, positive affect on firm performance in general, but also that these beneficial effects are attenuated by contextual factors that active gender stereotypes (e.g., country-level gender inequality and male-dominance of the industry) and the perceived riskiness of female leadership seen by capital markets. Parad...