Female CEOs and employee gender diversity: evidence from Korea

This article examines the effect of the CEO's gender on a firm's employment decisions, focusing on its investment in lower-level female workers. Using a sample of Korean public companies, we demonstrate that firms with female CEOs have a higher proportion of female workers than those with male CEOs. The regression results also suggest that these firms hire female workers at a higher rate than expected, resulting in a greater disparity between the actual and projected net hiring of women. We confirm that the influence of female CEOs on gender diversity at the lower level is robust to the proportion of female directors and various model specifications to mitigate industry bias and endogeneity problem.