Female empowerment in emerging market firms

This paper considers empowerment of women in firms from emerging market economies, with respect to participation in the boardroom either as the CEO or as one of the owners. This is of considerable importance as the involvement of women in the workplace is essential to GDP growth. We use data for a large cross-section of firms taken from the World Bank Enterprise Surveys from emerging markets to examine the determinants of female empowerment within firms by means of a bivariate probit model and matching analysis. This research finds that few firms in emerging economies have female senior managers and few have any female owners. The study identifies that firm size and access to finance are contributory factors but the most striking feature is the importance of national cultural attitudes towards women. The study further explores these cultural attitudes using data from the World Values Survey. It finds attitudes hostile to women in business to be more prevalent in men than women and associated with both religion and a love of tradition. Furthermore, attitudes that are more welcoming to women in business are associated with higher educational levels and a belief in democracy. Whilst these are not surprising results, finding empirical rather than anecdotal evidence that can be robustly quantified econometrically, is an improvement on the existing literature.