The Gender Position Gap and Firm Performance

In the workplace, women are less likely than men to hold higher paying positions throughout the entire organization, not just top executive roles. We refer to this phenomenon as the gender position gap. Using novel gender and salary data on employees who hold various positions within firms, we examine the determinants of the gender position gap and its informativeness about future firm performance. We find that the gender position gap is wider for firms with larger female–male differences in human capital characteristics (prior work experience and education), fewer female leaders, and weaker monitoring (proxied by institutional ownership, analyst following, and firm size). Firms with larger gender position gaps have poorer future performance. This negative association is not driven by employees at the top or bottom end of the corporate hierarchy. The negative association is stronger for firms that rely more on human capital. Firms with a larger gender position gap also have lower future stock returns, which suggests that investors do not fully utilize information about gender position gaps. Overall, our findings are consistent with the view that the gender position gap contains information about future firm performance.