Board gender quotas and outward foreign direct investment: Evidence from France

Abstract

We show that board gender quota laws reduce the propensity of French firms to undertake outward foreign direct investment. For this, we use firm-level data for the period 2007 to 2015 and a difference-in-difference approach. The exogenous increase in the share of women directors decreases the share of foreign subsidiaries by 7 percentage points when the share of women directors is at its highest. The share of foreign subsidiaries is affected by the decrease in probability of having a foreign subsidiary, which indicates disinvestment. The effects on outward foreign direct investment we detect are strongest for the poorly managed firms, pointing to tough managerial monitoring by gender diverse boards as the driving force behind results.