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Women lead differently than men. In order for them to be able to lead sustainably as leaders, it is necessary to reflect on typical female traits. In doing so, the way of typical female leadership, which is biologically anchored, should be taken into account. The aim should be to deal with them appropriately and fairly so that they themselves can lead sustainably. The biological requirements in women are centered on community, relationships, social skills, and communication. These findings are reflected in psychology and linguistics and are also evident when women are described as leaders. Three examples from practice corroborate the findings and show the necessity to understand diversity as an opportunity, to regard female leaders as 'normal', to convey appreciation for their typical leadership style just as much as it is appreciated as for male leadership and to deal with female images of leadership and to enthrone female leaders. INTRADISCIPLINARY AND/OR INTERDISCIPLINARY IMPLICATIONS: The article is interdisciplinary in that it combines insights from biology, psychology, linguist and management theory.

Familienunternehmen arbeiten gerne mit Führungsteams, in denen Männer und Frauen vertreten sind. Das ist das Ergebnis der Umfrage des ifo Instituts im Auftrag der Stiftung Familienunternehmen. Sie betrachtet auch eigene Maßnahmen der Unternehmen und ihre Erwartungen an die Politik rund um Frauen in Führungspositionen.

Diese Arbeit, bestehend aus einem Theorie- und einem empirischen Teil, befasst sich mit dem Thema Issue-Selling (Themenverkauf) und dessen Bedeutung für die Leistungs- und Wandelfähigkeit von Organisationen, sowie der Rolle, der am Prozess beteiligten, weiblichen Führungskräften des mittleren Managements.Der Theorieteil dieser Arbeit befasst sich mit dem Stellenwert des mittleren Managements im Wandel der Zeit, dem Einfluss weiblicher Führungskräfte auf die Performance und Reputati-on von Unternehmen und betrachtet die aus den theoretischen Grundlagen und dem aktuellen Stand der Forschung gewonnenen Erkenntnisse zum Thema Issue-SellingIm empirischen Teil wird die in 8 Leitfadeninterviews festgehaltene Wahrnehmung weiblicher Führungskräfte des mittleren Managements zu ihrer Beteiligung an organisationalen Issue-Selling Prozessen mittels qualitativer Inhaltsanalyse untersucht. Dabei zeigt sich, dass weibliche Führungskräfte des mittleren Managements selbst in nicht unterstützenden Unter-nehmensumfeldern wenig Bedenken haben, Themen offen anzusprechen. Sie bereiten sich gut auf Verkaufsversuche vor, entwickeln ein Gefühl für die Erwartungen des Top-Managements und vermeiden die Involvierung in politische, dem Machterhalt Einzelner dienender Vorgänge.*****This thesis, compromising a theoretical and an empirical section, deals with the topic of issue selling and its importance for the performance and change ability of organizations, as well as for the position of the female middle managers involved in the process.The theoretical part of this thesis reviews the significance of middle management over time, the influence of female executives on the performance and reputation of companies, and furthermore describes theoretical foundations and insights gained from the current state of research on the topic of issue selling. In the empirical part, the perceptions of female middle managers regarding their participa-tion in organizational issue-selling processes, as recorded in

Die geringe Repräsentation von Frauen in Führungspositionen hat die EU-Kommission dazu veranlasst, Maßnahmen und Ziele für eine gleichberechtigte Führungsverantwortung zu definieren. Zeitgleich haben die Corona-Maßnahmen zu tiefgreifenden Veränderungen der Arbeitsorganisation geführt. Neben einem Überblick zur Situation von Frauen in Führungspositionen wird ein Augenmerk auf die Wirkungen der Corona-Maßnahmen gelegt, um Chancen und Risiken zu identifizieren. Diese Maßnahmen können durch Verhaltensänderungen mit sowohl positiven als auch negativen Effekten verbunden sein. Langfristig dürften Frauen von den veränderten Bedingungen jedoch profitieren. The low representation of women in leadership positions has induced the EU Commission to define measures and targets for gender equality. Almost simultaneously, the measures adopted in the coronavirus pandemic have led to profound changes in the organisation of work. These can slow or inhibit the process. This article provides an overview of the situation of women in leadership positions and the most important reasons for their underrepresentation. Special attention is paid to the effects of the COVID-19 measures in order to identify opportunities and risks. It becomes clear that the same measures entail both positive and negative effects through behavioural changes. Nevertheless, in the long term, women are likely to benefit significantly from the new conditions.

In dieser Arbeit wird die Rolle der sozialen Netzwerke in Bezug auf den Karriereerfolg von Frauen in Führungsposition erforscht. Soziale Netzwerke üben einen großen Einfluss auf die berufliche Karriere aus. Besonders ab der Stufe des mittleren Managements nimmt die Relevanz deutlich zu. Der Ausschluss aus sozialen Netzwerken stellt daher ein Karrierehindernis dar. Von dieser ‚Netzwerkisolation‘ sind besonders Frauen aus verschiedensten Gründen betroffen. Die einzelnen Isolationsgründe und deren Bedeutung für Frauen im mittleren und Top-Management stehen im Mittelpunkt dieser Arbeit. Weiters wird untersucht, welchen Nutzen eigene Frauennetzwerke, als mögliche Lösungsstrategie gegen Netzwerkisolation, aufweisen. Zudem werden soziale Netzwerke auf Unterschiede und Gemeinsamkeiten zwischen dem öffentlichen und privatwirtschaftlichen Sektor betrachtet. Um die Forschungsfragen zu beantworten, wurden sieben qualitative Leitfadeninterviews mit Frauen in Führungsposition in der öffentlichen Verwaltung und der Privatwirtschaft durchgeführt. Nach der Methode von BRAUN und CLARKE wurden die sieben Interviews thematisch analysiert. Es konnten folgende Ergebnisse gewonnen werden: Der Isolationsgrund ‚Minderheit von Frauen in Führungsposition‘ wurde am bedeutsamsten eingestuft und ist ein relevanter Ausgangspunkt für die Isolationsgründe ‚Gesellschaftlicher Wertekanon‘ und ‚Ausschluss aus informellen Netzwerken‘. Die Netzwerkisolation stellt demnach eine nachweisbare zusätzliche Hürde für Frauen in Führungsposition dar. Frauennetzwerke dienen in diesem Kontext der emotionalen Unterstützung, um diese Herausforderung bewältigen zu können. Diese ersetzen aber keine ‚gemischten‘ sozialen Netzwerke. Ein signifikanter Unterschied bezüglich sozialer Netzwerke zwischen dem öffentlichen und privatwirtschaftlichen Sektor konnte nicht erkannt werden. This thesis attempts to explore the role of social networks in the careers of women in leadership positions. Social networks have a big impact on the professional career. The relevance increases significantly starting with the middle management level. Exclusion from social networks therefore represents a career barrier. Women are affected by ‘network isolation’ for a variety of reasons. The reasons for isolation and their significance for women in middle and top management are the focus of this thesis. The use of women networks is investigated as a possible solution strategy against network isolation. In addition differences and similarities of social networks between the public and private sectors were considered. In order to answer the research questions seven qualitative interviews were conducted with women in leadership positions in the public administration and the private sector. According to the method of BRAUN and CLARKE the seven interviews were thematically analyzed. The following results were achieved: The isolation reason 'minority of women in leadership positions' was rated most important and is a relevant starting point for the isolation reasons 'social canon of values' and 'exclusion from informal networks'. Network isolation thus provides a provable additional barrier for women in leadership positions. In this context women networks provide emotional support to meet this challenge, but do not replace "mixed" social networks. A significant difference in social networks between the public and private sector was not identified. vorgelegt von: Nina Albert Wien, FH Campus Wien, Masterarb., 2019

The existence and causes of gender gaps in pay and in occupational choice have been increasingly at the centre of research in economics, sociology, psychology, managerial science, and other fields. The research findings across countries and over time generally suggest that gaps exist and are significant, indicating that gender inequality remains persistent in many areas, even in the developed Western democracies. Forcefully closing the gaps directly, however, may not be sufficient in the long run. Trying to fix the symptoms without addressing the causes is likely to create other distortions and lead to further welfare losses over time. One hotly debated issue is that of the gender effect on business performance. Women are in a striking minority when it comes to managerial roles and entrepreneurship. According to Terjesen, Aguilera and Lorenz (2015), in 2013 the average proportion of women on the corporate board of directors across 67 countries was only 10.3 per cent, although empirical evidence suggests that higher presence of women on corporate boards is often positively correlated with various measurements of high performance. For example, according to the Fawcett Society (2013), 'companies with more women on their boards were found to outperform their rivals with a 42 per cent higher return in sales, 66 per cent higher return on invested capital and 53 per cent higher return on equity'. Do women make better leaders, better managers, better 'bosses', and, if yes, why don't we see more women than men in these roles? A broad answer to this question is institutional failure, including both formal and informal institutions. Many countries have outlawed gender discrimination and have legislated measures towards eliminating gender gaps. However, even in these countries societal norms and perceptions often lag behind. Failure to realize gains from equal opportunities ultimately leads to a misallocation of human and physical resources and thus to social welfare loss. The answer to the question whether women make better leaders is trickier. A study by Martinsen and Glasø (2013) has concluded that female managers outperform their male counterparts in four out of five categories of leadership characteristics. Among about 3,000 managers, women were better at initiative and clear communication, openness and ability to innovate, sociability and supportiveness, and methodical management and goal-setting, while men were better at dealing with work-related stress and in maintaining higher levels of emotional stability. In this regard, the question Gazanchyan, Hashimzade, Rodionova, and Vershinina (2017) attempted to answer is slightly different. If there is a positive effect of female leadership on business performance, could it be because women face higher hurdles than men, and those who succeeded in making it to the top are better than men in similar roles? The approach to this question was to construct a theoretical model linking occupational choice in the presence of gender bias to business performance and to subject the assumptions and predictions of themodel to an empirical test. While the firm-level data set used in this study contained important details of firm characteristics contributing to business performance as well as the information on the gender of the firm owner and senior manager, it provided no information on the personality and characteristics of the owners and managers. Thus, the aim of the research was to compare the performance of firms owned and/or managed by women and those owned and/or managed by men, with all other observable characteristics being similar, or matched: if there is a gap, it can then be attributed to the gender effect. A potential hurdle explored in this work was access to finance in the credit markets for reasons discussed below.

Women are globally under-represented in top-tier jobs, and according to recent data, in 2013 only around 20 percent of board members in OECD countries were female (OECD, 2013). In addition, empirical studies using different research strategies and rich data consistently find that women earn less than men (e.g. Weichselbaumer and Winter-Ebmer, 2005). Differences in formal qualification levels between men and women have converged over the past decades (Goldin 2006) and cannot explain differences in labour market outcomes between men and women at present as well as in earlier decades. Apart from classical wage discrimination theories (Becker, 1957), part of this gender gap in labour market outcomes could be explained by systematic gender differences in competitiveness. Attitudes towards competitiveness are relevant for educational decisions, during wage negotiations or for occupational choices. For example, women tend to choose different majors in tertiary education (Zafar, 2013) and choose different occupations than men (Goldin, 2014). Differences in competitiveness might determine a career path if promotions are linked to performance in competitive settings. Reuben, Sapienza, and Zingales (2015) ascertain that male graduates are more competitive than female graduates in the beginning of their career and they are more likely to select themselves into higher paid industries. Overall, they conclude that gender differences in competitiveness explain about 10 percent of the gender gap in earnings.

Women's labour market outcomes have improved substantially in the past decades, both in absolute terms and relative to men, in the United States and Western European countries as well as in several other countries around the world. Specifically, gender gaps have narrowed considerably (and in several cases disappeared) in human capital accumulation (educational attainment), labour force participation, hours of work and occupation. Claudia Goldin referred to this phenomenon as a 'grand gender convergence' (Goldin 2014). Yet, gender gaps in earnings and leadership still persist. Women earn substantially less than men and are under-represented in leadership positions in firms and organisations more broadly. The presence and persistence of gender gaps in earnings and leadership is cause for great concern for both reasons of social justice and efficiency, to the extent that the gender imbalances reflect a sub-optimal allocation of human capital in firms and in the economy. In this article, we focus on the causes and consequences of female-male gaps in earnings and representation at the top of organisations. Gender gaps in wages and leadership are one of the most researched topics in labour economics and beyond. Rather than attempting to summarise the vast literature on these subjects, we present a selective discussion of recent empirical work in an attempt to highlight recent findings on causes and consequences of gender gaps in the labour market and to discuss the main knowledge gaps and what we believe are some of the most promising areas for future research.1 Most of the papers we focus on refer to the United States, but the trends and patterns described are likely to apply more broadly.

Trotz Fusionen und Finanzkrise hat sich im Finanzsektor wenig geändert: Der Frauenanteil in den Spitzengremien der großen Banken und Versicherungen in Deutschland blieb auch 2010 auf einem extrem niedrigen Niveau. Innovationspotentiale, die sich aus einer deutlichen Erhöhung des Frauenanteils in den Entscheidungsgremien ergeben, bleiben ungenutzt. Obwohl im Finanzsektor weit mehr als die Hälfte der Beschäftigten Frauen sind, stellen sie nur 2,9 Prozent der Vorstandsmitglieder in den großen Banken und Sparkassen und nur 2,5 Prozent dieser Posten in den großen Versicherungen. Die Finanzkrise hat hier nicht zu einem Umdenken geführt. In den größten 100 Banken und Sparkassen hat sich damit der Frauenanteil in Spitzengremien im Vergleich zum Vorjahr kaum verändert - in den Versicherungen ging er sogar leicht zurück. Etwas häufiger sind Frauen in den Aufsichtsräten vertreten: Ihr Anteil beträgt in den Top 100 der Banken und Sparkassen 16,3 Prozent, in den 62 Versicherungen 11,9 Prozent und liegt damit sogar leicht unter den Werten des Vorjahres. Die weitaus meisten Frauen werden hier aufgrund der Mitbestimmungsregelungen als Arbeitnehmervertreterinnen entsandt - in den Top 100 der Banken und Sparkassen zu 66,7 Prozent, in den Versicherungen zu 81,3 Prozent. Die öffentlichen unter den größten Kredithäusern lassen ihre Vorbildfunktion missen: Mit nur zwei Prozent Frauen in den Vorständen und 16,5 in den Aufsichtsräten stehen sie keineswegs besser da als die privatwirtschaftlichen Kreditinstitute - trotz Landes- und Bundesgleichstellungsregelungen. Frauen an der Spitze des Aufsichtsrats gibt es allerdings nur bei den öffentlich-rechtlichen Banken und Sparkassen. In allen großen Instituten im Finanzbereich gibt es erheblichen Nachholbedarf bei der Besetzung von Spitzenpositionen durch Frauen. Ohne einen klaren und verbindlichen Fahrplan für die Umsetzung ist eine Chancengleichheit von Frauen und Männern bei der Besetzung der Spitzengremien in den großen privaten und öffentlichen Finanzinstituten in absehbarer Zeit nicht in Sicht.

Im Aufsichtsrat der 200 größten Unternehmen (Top 200) in Deutschland sind Frauen nur zu 7,8 % vertreten. Über die Hälfte von ihnen (57,4 %) wird von Arbeitnehmervertretungen entsandt. Der Anteil der Unternehmen ohne eine Frau im Aufsichtsrat liegt bei über einem Drittel. Bei den Vorstandsposten sind Frauen noch schwächer vertreten. So ist in den 100 größten Unternehmen (Top 100) nur eine Frau im Vorstand. Bei den Top 200 sind es nur elf, dies entspricht einem Anteil von gut einem Prozent. Die Ergebnisse zeigen, dass das Ziel der Gleichstellung der Geschlechter in einflussreichen Spitzenpositionen größerer Unternehmen nach wie vor in weiter Ferne liegt. Unter den europäischen Ländern führt Norwegen mit einem Frauenanteil von knapp einem Drittel in den Entscheidungsgremien der 50 größten börsennotierten Unternehmen. Über dem Durchschnitt liegen auch die anderen skandinavischen Länder sowie die osteuropäischen EU-Mitgliedstaaten; Deutschland befindet sich mit 11 % im Mittelfeld. Beim Anteil von Frauen in den breiter definierten Managementpositionen steht Deutschland nach Angaben der Europäischen Kommission mit rund einem Viertel am unteren Ende der Länderrangfolge. Selbst Länder mit relativ geringer Erwerbsbeteiligung der Frauen wie Spanien und Italien weisen hier mit jeweils knapp einem Drittel deutlich höhere Frauenanteile als Deutschland auf.

Die Entlohnung von Frauen in Führungspositionen bleibt deutlich hinter der von Männern zurück. Unter Kostenaspekten müsste dies für Arbeitgeber ein Anreiz sein, Frauen zu beschäftigen. Tatsächlich sind Frauen in höheren Positionen aber nach wie vor viel seltener vertreten als Männer. Dies gilt insbesondere für Positionen mit sogenannten umfassenden Führungsaufgaben. Um den Anteil von Frauen in Führungspositionen deutlich zu steigern, müssen offenbar entschiedenere Maßnahmen zur Herstellung beruflicher Chancengleichheit ergriffen werden als bisher. Dazu gehören neben der Verbesserung der Vereinbarkeit von Familie und Beruf auch gezielte Personalentwicklungsmaßnahmen für qualifizierte Frauen.

Aus dem Projekt "Förderung angehender weiblicher Führungskräfte in kleinen und mittleren Unternehmen als CSR-Maßnahme"; ein Projekt der Hochschule Bonn-Rhein-Sieg im Rahmen des Programms "CSR-Gesellschaftliche Verantwortung im Mittelstand" gefördert durch das Bundesministerium für Arbeit und Soziales und durch den Europäischen Sozialfonds.

Der Frauenanteil an Aufsichtsratsposten ist bei den großen Banken und Sparkassen sowie bei Versicherungsgesellschaften in Deutschland gering. Im Bankgewerbe beträgt er 15 % und bei Versicherungen 11 %. Dass dennoch in den meisten Aufsichts- oder Verwaltungsräten Frauen vertreten sind, geht überwiegend auf die Entsendung durch Arbeitnehmervertretungen zurück. Die Vorstandssitze der großen Unternehmen des Versicherungs- und Kreditgewerbes sind dagegen - wie auch bei den anderen großen Unternehmen - fest in Männerhand. Nur 2,5 % dieser Posten werden von Frauen eingenommen. Damit besteht eine eklatante Diskrepanz zwischen dem hohen Anteil weiblicher Beschäftigter in der Finanzbranche insgesamt (54 %) und ihrer Repräsentanz in den Top-Entscheidungsgremien.

NBER Working Paper series, Working Paper 19740, http://www.nber.org/papers/w19740, National Bureau of Economic Research A large share of the poor in developing countries run small enterprises, often earning low incomes. This paper explores whether the poor performance of businesses can be explained by a lack of basic business skills. We randomized the offer of a free, 48-hour business skills course to female entrepreneurs in rural Mexico. We find that those assigned to treatment earn higher profits, have larger revenues, serve a greater number of clients, are more likely to use formal accounting techniques, and more likely to be registered with the government. Indirect treatment effects on those entrepreneurs randomized out of the program, yet living in treatment villages, are economically meaningful, yet imprecisely measured. We present a simple model of experience and learning that helps interpret our results, and consistent with the theoretical predictions, we find that "low-quality" entrepreneurs are the most likely to quit their business post-treatment, and that the positive impacts of the treatment are increasing in entrepreneurial quality.

In this paper, we analyze the effect of market power on the share of females in top management positions using data from a market in which some firms have market power due to an institutionalized cartel. We investigate collegiate athletics and interpret coaches as top-level managers or chief executive officers (CEOs). The causal link between market power and female employment is established by exploiting the existence of the Bowl Championship Series (BCS) as an exogenous shock. Our results show that an increase in the market share has a negative effect on females relative to males among coaches. We interpret this as clear evidence for Becker's (1957) theory on employer discrimination. Only firms operating in an oligopolistic or otherwise not perfectly competitive environment can sustain a taste or cost of discrimination. Market power is necessary to let firms share rents with their workers, which they do in a discriminatory way.

This paper proposes a new measure of gender differences in access to jobs based on a job assignment model. This measure is the probability ratio of getting a job for females and males at each rank of the wage ladder. We derive a non-parametric estimator of this access measure and estimate it for French full-time executives aged 40-45 in the private sector. Our results show that the gender difference in the probability of getting a job increases along the wage ladder from 9% to 50%. Females thus have a significantly lower access to high-paid jobs than to low-paid jobs.

We conduct a randomized experiment in Sri Lanka to measure the impact of the most commonly used business training course in developing countries, the Start-and-Improve Your Business (SIYB) program. In contrast to existing business training evaluations which are restricted to microfinance clients, we consider two more representative groups: a random sample of women operating subsistence enterprises, and a random sample of women who are out of the labor force but interested in starting a business. Both samples are randomized into three groups: a control group, a group invited to attend training, and a group invited to receive training and who receive a cash grant conditional on completing training. We track impacts over four rounds of follow-up surveys taken over two years and find that the short- and medium-term impacts differ. For women already in business, we find that although training alone leads to some changes in business practices, it has no impact on business profits, sales or capital stock. In contrast the combination of training and a grant leads to large and significant improvements in business profitability in the first eight months, but this impact dissipates in the second year. For women interested in starting enterprises, we find that business training speeds up the process of opening a business, and changes the selection of who operates a business by making the entrants less analytically skilled, but leads to no increase in net business ownership by our final survey round. Receiving a grant results in poorer women opening businesses, but again does not increase net business ownership. Training appears to have increased the profitability and business practices of the businesses started up, suggesting it may be more effective for new owners than for enhancing existing businesses.

The goal of this study is to examine whether women in the highest levels of firms' management ranks help reduce barriers to women's advancement in the workplace. Using a panel of over 20,000 private-sector firms across all industries and states during 1990-2003 from the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, we explore the influence of women in top management on subsequent female representation in lower-level managerial positions in U.S. firms. Our key findings show that an increase in the share of female top managers is associated with subsequent increases in the share of women in mid-level management positions within firms, and this result is robust to controlling for firm size, workforce composition, federal contractor status, firm fixed effects, year fixed effects and industry-specific trends. Moreover, although the influence of women in top management positions is strongest among white women, black, Hispanic and Asian women in top management also have a positive influence on subsequent increases in black, Hispanic and Asian women in mid-level management, respectively. Furthermore, the influence of women in top management positions is stronger among federal contractors, and in firms with larger female labor forces. We also find that the positive influence of women in top leadership positions on managerial gender diversity diminishes over time, suggesting that women at the top play a positive but transitory role in women's career advancement.

The paper analyzes the gender pay gap in private-sector management positions based on German panel data and using fixed-effects models. It deals with the effect of occupational sex segregation on wages, and the extent to which wage penalties for managers in predominantly female occupations are moderated by firm size. Drawing on economic and organizational approaches and the devaluation of women's work, we find wage penalties for female occupations in management only in large firms. This indicates a pronounced devaluation of female occupations, which might be due to the longer existence, stronger formalization, or more established old-boy networks of large firms.

We analyze the effect of the introduction of gender quotas in candidate lists on the quality of elected politicians. We consider an Italian law which introduced gender quotas in local elections in 1993, and was abolished in 1995. As not all municipalities went through elections during the period the reform was in force, we can identify two groups of municipalities and use a Difference in Differences estimation to analyze the effect of gender quotas on the quality of elected politicians. We find that gender quotas are associated with a higher average number of years of schooling of elected politicians, with the effect ranging from 0.12 to 0.18 years of education. This effect is due not only to the higher number of elected women, who are on average more educated than their male colleagues, but also to the lower number of low-educated elected men. The positive effect on quality is confirmed also when we measure the latter with alternative indicators of the quality of politicians, it persists in the long run and it is robust to the inclusion of political ideology.

While Vietnamese businesswomen have exhibited their excellent capability in overcoming the global economic crisis as well as their readiness to play an essential role in rebuilding the post-crisis economy, the country's women-led export enterprises that are facing post-crisis challenges are in the need of suitable policy support and "hand-holding" to successfully navigate this difficult period. This research paper is a preliminary attempt to inquire, through a small sample survey, the response and adaptation of the Vietnamese woman-led, mostly export-oriented, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) to the new challenges arising from the economic crisis, and especially the ways these enterprises have sustained their export orientation. (However, it is not a comparative study with their male counterpart SMEs). The results indicate that most of the woman-led, export-oriented SMEs have relied on their own efforts to overcome the crisis challenges. Their crisis management strategies have included taking market-oriented and in-house policy measures, such as collecting authentic market intelligence, designing an appropriate crisis management strategy, followed by cost-oriented efforts to scale down the production and marketing volume and readjust pricing to increase their competiveness. As woman-led export enterprises become committed to the responses in line with market requirements to the new difficulties resulting from the crisis, the research findings reveal the need for a more supportive role by government organizations and industry associations. The package of policy programmes may include: (a) market research, up-to-date and ongoing information on supply and demand pattern of the products and early warning signals; (b) export-oriented market development training and skills upgrading programmes; (c) easy access to export credit, including pre- and post-shipment credit; and (d) special dispensing of post-crisis rehabilitation finance from institutional sources on easy terms. To benefit further from on the above research findings and the recommendations emanating from the case study of Viet Nam, it would be worthwhile and cost-effective to examine their policy relevance to the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Cambodia, two neighbouring countries with similar economic settings and SME status. This could be done through two short pilot research projects under the ARTNeT umbrella, with the ultimate objective of mitigating the challenges faced by woman-led exporting units in the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Cambodia. Such a study will be an effective starting point for testing the need for suitable policy interventions in the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Cambodia as well. Further, viewed from the subregional angle, these joint efforts by Viet Nam, the Lao People's Democratic Republic and Cambodia are expected to enhance the capabilities of woman-led exporting SMEs in the regional and global markets.

Exploiting the richness of the Danish register data on individuals and companies, we are able to provide an overall assessment of the assortative matching patterns arising in the period 1996-2005 controlling for firms and individual characteristics. We find strong differences between men and women in assortativity. While positive assortative matching in job-to-job transitions emerges for good female workers, good male workers are more likely to be promoted. These differences are not present in female friendly firms which have high profits and where good female workers tend to find jobs. Complementary analysis on job-to-unemployment and job-to-self-employment transitions reveals a lower employer's willingness to retain women. Overall, we find strong evidence of glass-ceilings in certain firms preventing women to climb the carrier ladder and pushing them to look for better jobs offered by more female friendly firms.

We develop a model that nests previous explanations for women under-representation in positions of power. Focusing on democratic electoral dynamics, our framework delineates the three types of mechanisms that may be at play: consumer demand, candidate supply, and internal party dynamics beyond electoral markets. We use Spain's Equality Law, requiring a 40 percent female quota in electoral lists, to test the alternative theories. The law was enacted by the social-democratic party after the surprise parliamentary electoral results following the Madrid terrorist bombings, and was therefore completely unexpected by regional political machines. The law only applied to towns with populations above 5000, so we can use a treatment-control, before-and-after discontinuity design to learn about the impact of female politicians in local elections. Our evidence is most consistent with the existence of entrenched male-dominated political machines capturing influential power positions within the parties.

The study analyses the gender pay gap in private-sector management positions in Germany based on data from the German Socio-Economic Panel Study (SOEP) for the years 2001-2008. It focuses in particular on gender segregation in the labor market, that is, on the unequal distribution of women and men across different occupations and on the effects of this inequality on earnings levels and gender wage differentials in management positions. Our paper is, to our knowledge, the first in Germany to use time-constant unobserved heterogeneity and gender-specific promotion probabilities to estimate wages and wage differentials for persons in managerial positions. The results of the fixed effects model show that working in a more "female" job, as opposed to a more "male" job, affects only women's wages negatively. This result remains stable after controlling for human capital endowments and other effects. Mechanisms of the devaluation of jobs not primarily held by men also negatively affect pay in management positions (evaluative discrimination) and are even more severe for women (allocative discrimination). However, the effect is notlinear; the wage penalties for women occur only in "integrated" (more equally male/female) jobs as opposed to typicallymale jobs, and not in typically female jobs. Thedevaluation of occupations that are not primarily held by men becomes even more evident when promotion probabilities are taken into account. An Oaxaca/Blinder decomposition of the wage differential between men and women in management positions shows that the full model explains 65 percent of the gender pay gap. In other words: Thirty-five percent remain unexplained; this portion reflects, for example, time-varying social and cultural conditions, such as discriminatory policies and practices in the labor market.

We explore the antecedents and consequences of women leaders' identity interference related to the perceived conflict between their roles as both women and leaders. Drawing on identity development and organizational demography research, we propose that leadership experience reduces women leaders' identity interference, whereas women's numerical underrepresentation in organizations exacerbates it. Moreover, we hypothesize that identity processes related to collective self-esteem - personal regard for one's collective identity and the perception of others' views of it - mediate these effects. A sample of 722 women leaders representing a diverse range of countries and industries supported our hypotheses. We also demonstrate that identity interference reduces the psychological well-being of women leaders and undermines their affective motivation to lead. In contrast, perceived conflict between leader and female identities enhances women's sense of duty to assume leadership roles. Importantly, women leaders' personal regard for their female identity buffers the detrimental effect of identity interference on life satisfaction. We discuss the implications of our results for women's advancement in organizations and the development of their identity as leaders.

This study used data from the German Socio-economic Panel to examine gender differences in the extent to which self-reported subjective well-being was associated with occupying a high-level managerial position in the labour market, compared with employment in non-leadership, non-high-level managerial positions, unemployment, and non-labour market participation. Our results indicated that a clear hierarchy exists for men in term of how status within the labour market was associated with subjective life satisfaction. Unemployed men were the least satisfied, followed by men who were not in the labour market, while men in leadership positions reported the highest level of subjective life satisfaction. For women, no statistically significant differences were observed among women in high-level managerial positions, women who worked in non-high-level positions, and women who specialized in household production, with no market work. Only women who were unemployed reported lower levels of life satisfaction, compared with women in other labour-market statuses. Our results lend evidence to the contention that men can "have it all", but women must still choose between career and family in Germany. We argue that interventions need to address how the non-pecuniary rewards associated with high-level managerial and leadership positions can be increased for women. Such policies would also likely serve to mitigate the "pipeline" problem concerning the number of women who are available to move into high positions in the private sector.

This paper analyzes gender differences in the investment activity of German small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs). The empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of firms drawn from the KfW Mittelstandspanel, a representative survey of German SMEs for the period from 2003 to 2009. We find evidence that female-owned firms are less likely to invest and if they invest, then their average investment rate is lower. These differences cannotentirely be explained by firm or owner characteristics. Furthermore, women’s investment is less sensitive to cash flow, which indicates that it is unlikely that their lower investment is driven by difficulties in acquiring external finance. An analysis of stated investment goals reveals that women have different preferences and attitudes towards investment. They indicate to a lesser extent aspiring and growth-orientated investment goals like sales increase, innovation/R&D or implementation of new products.

This paper provides the first evidence on gender differences in investment financing, credit application and credit denial rates in Germany. The empirical analysis is carried out on a sample of firms drawn from the KfW Mittelstandspanel, a representative survey of German SMEs for the period from 2003 to 2009. Our results suggest that in female-owned firms the share of internal capital in investment financing is higher and the share of external funds is lower than for male-owned firms. An analysis of the supply- and demand-side on the credit market shows that women are not more likely to be denied credit but the probability that they apply for credit is on average lower. Yet, this gender difference in the probability of credit application is only evident when considering firms with negative or neutral sales expectations. There is no significant gender difference in credit application rates of firms with positive sales expectations.

We empirically investigate the determinants of the female decision of investing in post-secondary education, focusing on the role played by the context where young women take their education decision. We first develop a stylized two-period model to analyze the female decision of investing in education and highlight two main determinants: the time to be devoted to child care and the probability of working in a skilled job. We then use data on educational decisions of women in the 17-21 age group drawn from EU-Silc, available for the years 2004-2008. From the same survey we construct context indicators at the regional level, and exploit regional variability to identify how women's educational investment reacts to changes in the surrounding context. We find that the share of working women with children below 5 and the share of women with managerial positions or self-employed positively affect the probability that women enrol in post-secondary education. The same does not hold for men.

Firms in Kenya rely on technologies such as computers, cell-phones, and generators to overcome constraints associated with regulations, infrastructure, security, workforce, corruption, and finance. This study shows that such reliance has significant positive impacts on productivity as measured by value-added per worker, especially for firms with female principal owners. The exogenous component of technology ownership is isolated by using information on the regional presence of missionary schools from Kenya's colonial past, as well as geographical indicators such as rainfall, changes in forest cover, and average regional elevation. Results indicate that for firms with female owners, technology adoption improves value-added per worker by about 49 percentage points. It is also statistically evident that for such firms, the ownership of technologies such as computers, cell-phones, and generators succeeds in mitigating the costs of business obstacles. For male-owned firms, such patterns are absent.

This paper examines whether women benefit from working under female management using Swedish matched employer-employee panel data. I account for unobserved heterogeneity among both workers and firms potentially correlated with manager gender. The results show a substantial negative and statistically significant correlation between the proportion of female managers and the establishment's gender wage gap. However, estimates that account for sorting on unobserved worker skills do not support that that managers favor same-sex workers in wage setting. Additional results show female-led organizations recruit more non-managerial, high-wage women but this is primarily due to (unobserved) firm attributes rather than gender-specific management practices.

This paper analyses the gender gap in compensation for CEOs, Vice-Directors, and potential top executives in the 2000 largest Danish private companies based on a panel data set of employer-employees data covering the period 1996-2005. During the period, the overall gender gap in compensation for top executives and potential top executives decreased from 35 percent to 31 percent. However, contrary to many other studies, we do not find that the gender gap for Danish top executives disappears when controlling for observed individual and firm characteristics and unobserved individual heterogeneity. For CEOs, the raw compensation gap is 28 percent during the period while the estimated compensation gap after controlling for observed and unobserved characteristics increases to 30 percent. For executives below the CEO level, the estimated compensation gap is lower, ranging from 15 to 20 percent. Thus, we find evidence of both glass ceilings and sticky floors in Danish private firms.

This paper examines the gender composition of the flow of new hirees along the organizational hierarchy of jobs. We find that women have a reduced chance to be hired at higher hierarchical levels. We refer to this phenomenon as the glass door. The glass door consists of an absolute and a relative effect. First, there is a reduced probability of women being recruited for jobs at higher hierarchical levels. Second, a larger fraction of jobs below the focal level of hiring within the firm reduces the relative inflow of female hirees. The latter component leads women moving to firms in which the job has a lower relative position in the hierarchical structure. We explain the glass door phenomenon by a theoretical model of the firm's decision to hire a woman. The model is based on two key assumptions. First, women have a higher probability of leaving due to their higher valuation of non-market activities. Second, a voluntary quit leads to a larger decrease in the production of lower level co-workers when the worker who leaves has a position in the upper tier of the hierarchy. The glass door implies that the value of women's outside option in the labor market is lower. It may provide an additional explanation of why a glass ceiling can be sustainable as an equilibrium phenomenon.

Führungspositionen sind nach wie vor eine Domäne von Männern - und je höher die Tätigkeiten in der Hierarchie angesiedelt sind, desto schwächer sind Frauen vertreten. In nahezu allen Wirtschaftszweigen üben Frauen in geringerem Maße Leitungsfunktionen aus als es ihrem Anteil an der gesamten Beschäftigung entspricht. Auch in Tätigkeiten unmittelbar unterhalb von Leitungsfunktionen sind Frauen deutlich unterrepräsentiert. So ausgeprägt die Vorherrschaft der Männer in Führungspositionen immer noch ist, so deutlich wird auch, dass sich die Stellung der Frauen verbessert. So ist der Anteil der Frauen an den angestellten Führungskräften außerhalb des öffentlichen Dienstes von 17,6 Prozent im Jahr 1996 auf 20,3 Prozent im Jahr 2007 gestiegen. Der Anteil der Frauen an den Selbständigen mit fünf und mehr Beschäftigten hat in derselben Zeit von 16 Prozent auf 21 Prozent zugelegt. Diese Tendenz hat sich bis 2010 fortgesetzt, und es ist zu erwarten, dass sie weiter anhält.

We present evidence from an experiment in which groups select a leader to compete against the leaders of other groups in a real-effort task that they have all performed in the past. We find that women are selected much less often as leaders than is suggested by their individual past performance. We study three potential explanations for the underrepresentation of women, namely, gender differences in overconfidence concerning past performance, in the willingness to exaggerate past performance to the group, and in the reaction to monetary incentives. We find that men's overconfidence is the driving force behind the observed prevalence of male representation.