Women on Boards in Family Firms

In this paper, we examine the heterogeneity in the adoption of new corporate governance norms between family firms and non-family firms in the specific context of induction of women directors onto corporate boards. We do so by exploiting a regulation introduced in 2013 in India that required companies to induct at least one woman director on the board within a year. Using panel data from 1507 publicly listed firms, we find that there is no significant difference in the proportion of women directors between family firms and non-family firms. We further distinguish family firms into stand-alone firms and firms belonging to family-owned business groups and find that women director proportion and the proportion of executive women directors is higher in stand-alone family firms.