Do Female Executives Play the Same Role in Determining Firm Performance Across Industries in China?

Abstract

Taking 9416 firm-year observations from 856 A-share listed companies in China over 2006-2016 as the research sample, the paper concentrates on female executives’ performance consequences and provides comparative investigations on such consequences across industries. In terms of industry perspective, female-friendly, female-neutral and female-discriminative industries are identified, in which enterprises respectively enjoy positive, zero and negative performance consequences of female executives. In general, female-friendly industries have the characteristics of consumer-oriented, while female-discriminative industries have the characteristics of high-growth or high-tech.