The Influence of Top Management Team Characteristics on the Presence of Women on Corporate Board

International audienceIn recent years, gender diversity in the boardroom and more generally within organization has gained considerable interest in public debate, academic research, and corporate strategy. In the literature, there have been studies attempting to explain the obstacles and difficulties that women are facing to join the boardrooms as well as factors facilitating their progress on boards. However, there has been no systematic study about the relationship bet ween the presence of women on corporate boards and characteristics of top management team (represented by board members). We argue that this is a topic worth investigating. Research showing the influence of top management team characteristics on different organizational aspects abounds. It is reasonable to expect that top management team characteristics have a relationship with the presence of women on corporate boards. In this article, we attempt to examine this topic. We study the relationship bet ween top management team demographic traits (age and tenure) and heterogeneity (age, tenure, educational background, functional background, and executive ranking), and the presence of women on corporate boards within a sample of SBF 120 companies. We take into account the specificity of the French context by including “Grande école” and “Grand corps” in the characteristics of top management team