All roads (that) lead here. Effectiveness and limits of gender quotas in listed companies’ boards

Journal title SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO
Author/s Domenico Carbone, Joselle Dagnes
Publishing Year 2017 Issue 2017/148
Language Italian Pages 21 P. 167-187 File size 168 KB
DOI 10.3280/SL2017-148010
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The recent Italian legislation introducing gender quotas on the boards of Italian listed companies (Law no. 120/2011, called Golfo-Mosca) has modified the structure of these governance bodies, tripling in a short time the number of women in the board. The article starts by this change to analyze, through the results of a web survey conducted on female directors, the consequences of the recruitment induced by the law. In particular, we deepen: i) the socio-demographic profile and the career path of the female directors; ii) their opinion about the Golfo-Mosca law and its outcomes. The research highlights the positive effects of legislation - new highly qualified women in the boards, the improvement of the decisionmaking procedures - and brings out some problems: the difficulty to start longterm changes affecting the situation after the validity of the legal obligation, and the difficult to change the company orientation in terms of equal opportunities.

Keywords: Gender quotas, board of directors, gender equality, female leadership

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Domenico Carbone, Joselle Dagnes, Tutte le strade (che) portano qui Efficacia e limiti delle quote di genere nei CdA delle società quotate in "SOCIOLOGIA DEL LAVORO " 148/2017, pp 167-187, DOI: 10.3280/SL2017-148010