Project info
Work package
- Work
Sustainability threat
- Spillovers
Challenge
- Reconfiguring-roles-and-relationships
- Reshaping organizational forms
Study info
Related studies according to this researcher
Becoming an Agent of Change. Organizational Founding Context and Female Leaders’ Influence on Wage and Employment Equality
Imprinting and contested practices: early-careers of public sector directors and the adoption of temporary employment in Dutch public sector organizations
Description of Study
Women increasingly occupy higher organizational positions, and studies document mixed effects of their presence on gender equality in the organizations they manage. This study provides a novel approach to understand under which condition female leaders become "agents of change" who increase other women's wages in the organization they manage. Using unique, linked employer-employee register data from the Netherlands, we study critical career experiences of female directors. We find female directors with early-career exposure to other female board and directors with early-career exposure to a female CEO to increase gender wage and contract equality in the organizations they manage. Differences in subsamples are found and discussed. Our findings emphasize how female leaders influence inequality in organizations, and that their first career experiences play a pivotal role in shaping the outcome.
Study research question
We address two research questions: to what extent do female leaders influence gender inequality in the organizations they manage, and what is the role of early career normative and role model imprints on this relationship?
Collection provenance
- External data
Collection methods
- Archival
Personal data
Yes
External Source
Source description
The micro datasets we use are composed of i) tax records, ii) company registers of the Netherlands Chamber of Commerce (KVK), iii) population administration.
File formats
- Stata
- SPSS
Data types
- Structured
Languages
- Dutch
Coverage start
Coverage end
01/01/2010
31/12/2019
Spatial coverage
The Netherlands
Collection period start
—
Collection period end
—
Variables
Unit
Unit description
Sample size
Sampling method
Individuals
Employees, and citizens of municipalities.
No sample size
Register data from CBS
Organizations
Economically active organizations in the public sector, and economically active organizations in the private sector
No sample size
Register data from CBS
Hypothesis
Theory
Boards with a higher share of female board members, and members who had early-career exposure to female board members, will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting, agents of change, relational inequality theory
Boards with a higher share of female board members, and members who had early-career exposure to female board members, will decrease the gender permanency gap
Imprinting, agents of change, relational inequality theory
Boards with a higher share of female board members, and members who had early-career exposure to a female CEO, will decrease the gender wage gap
Imprinting, agents of change, relational inequality theory
Boards with a higher share of female board members, and members who had early-career exposure to a female CEO, will decrease the gender permanency gap
Imprinting, agents of change, relational inequality theory
Variable type
Variable name
Variable description
Dependent variable
Hourly wage
The monthly tax register documents information on wages and working hours for all Dutch employees, allowing us to calculate their average hourly wage.
Dependent variable
Permanent contract
The monthly tax register documents the type of employment contract (temporary versus permanent) of all Dutch employees
Independent variable
Female board members.
We used a dummy do identify each director’s gender (0 = male, 1 = female) and aggregated this information to obtain the proportion of female directors present in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Normative imprint
We created a variable for all directors in our dataset indicating whether the first executive job they had was in a board with a minimum of two female directors present. For female directors, this variable indicates whether they had exposure to similar high-status peers during their first executive experience. Aggregating this information to the organizational level, this variable is constructed as a dummy (0 = no board members with a normative imprint present in the board, 1 = board members with a normative imprint present in the board).
Independent variable
Empowerment imprint
We created a variable for all directors in our dataset indicating whether the first executive job they had was in a board with a female CEO present. Since the Chamber of Commerce does not contain information on the type of director, we identified CEOs in boards by linking their information to tax records to obtain their wages. We identified the director with the highest wage as the CEO, as they are generally the highest earners among directors. For directorate periods before 2006, wage information was unavailable. Here, we identified the board member with the longest tenure as the role model as it is the best proxy for a role model (i.e., most experienced member in the board). Aggregating this information to the organizational level, this variable is constructed as a dummy (0 = no board members with a role model imprint present in the board, 1 = board members with a role model imprint present in the board).
Independent variable
Average age of board members
This variable represented the average age of the board present in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Maximum tenure on board
For each director, we calculated the number of years they worked at their current organization. The variable showed the maximum tenure of the board in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Board size
The variable showed the number of board members in the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Female
We created a dummy for each individual in our dataset indicating whether they were female (0 = no, 1 = yes).
Independent variable
Age/age squared
We controlled for each individual employee’s age
Independent variable
Organization size
We defined organization size as the number of employees
Independent variable
Proportion of female employees
A dummy identified each individual employee’s gender (0 = male, 1 = female), we aggregated this information to the organizational level. The variable shows the proportion of female employees of the organization of each individual in our dataset per year.
Independent variable
Organizational events
We created dummies (0 = no, 1 = yes) for four organizational events: (1) birth of an organization, meaning that the organization first appeared that year; (2) death/collapse/combination birth and death of an organization, meaning that the observed year is the last time this organization appeared in the records (0 = no, 1 = yes); (3) the organization splits, merges with another organization, or is taken over by another organization; (4) the organization restructures.
Discipline-specific operationalizations
Conflict of interest
Data packages
n.a.
Data package DOI
—
Description
The final dataset was an individual/year-level panel with 15,129,286 observations for the period 2010-2019, with an average of 1,526,925 employees per year.
Accessibility
Restricted Access
Repository
CBS RA environment
User license
Retention period
Publications
Documents
Filename
Description
Date
Ethics
Ethical assessment
No
Ethical committee