Leadership & Gender Composition in Managerial Positions

Abstract

Despite significant progress in fighting gender inequality over the past 60 years, women remain heavily underrepresented at the top of the job status distribution in both the public and private sectors. However, only limited evidence exists about how female leaders may curb the underrepresentation problem at top positions. Using a regression discontinuity design to examine close elections in Brazil, this study analyzes how the election of a female mayor affects the gender composition gap of top municipal executives. Results reveal that electing a female mayor in a close race increases the share of appointed female managers by 17%. This increase is robust to a series of specification tests and does not come at the cost of observed quality of employees. Next, additional analyses show that these results are also associated with an increase in other direct gender equality policies. Finally, I show that this increase in gender composition in top positions is driven mainly by areas of the government in which females are already relatively overrepresented, implying that while in top positions gender composition imbalances in the overall public sector decreased, relative imbalances across sectors increased.