Doing more with more: Women on the board and firm employment

Tunyi, Abongeh A., Areneke, Geofry, Tob-Ogu, Abiye and Khalid, Sharif (2023) Doing more with more: Women on the board and firm employment. Journal of Business Research, 154. ISSN 0148-2963

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Abstract

While corporations play a pivotal social role by creating employment opportunities, managers typically boost profitability during economic downturns by downsizing. Using a panel of US-listed firms from 2007–2016, we explore the impact of female representation on the board of directors (BOD) on firm-level employment. We find that firm-level employment increases while the likelihood of downsizing decreases with BOD female representation. In corroboration, the level of under-staffing, and hence its associated problems, reduces with BOD female representation. The impact of female directors on employment is stronger in the absence of tokenism, more evident during downturns and shaped by female director typology. Importantly, we find that, while over-staffing problems might emerge, overall employee productivity improves with female representation, suggesting that female directors do not sacrifice shareholder value in pursuit of employee interests. Overall, our results suggest that female directors are crucial in promoting employment in society.

Item Type:	Article
Additional Information:	Publisher Copyright: © 2022 The Author(s)
Uncontrolled Keywords:	corporate governance,downsizing,female directors,firm employment,social role theory,under-staffing,marketing ,/dk/atira/pure/subjectarea/asjc/1400/1406
Faculty \ School:	Faculty of Social Sciences > Norwich Business School
Related URLs:	https://www.scopus.com/pages/publication...
Depositing User:	LivePure Connector
Date Deposited:	28 May 2026 15:53
Last Modified:	28 May 2026 15:53
URI:	https://ueaeprints.uea.ac.uk/id/eprint/103197
DOI:	10.1016/j.jbusres.2022.113385

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