Strategic Focus or Structural Constraint? Examining the Gender-Profitability Paradox in Serbian Accommodation Businesses

This study examines whether gender diversity in corporate leadership is associated with the financial performance of accommodation businesses in Serbia, a transition economy where women are well represented in the tourism workforce but underrepresented in decision-making. Drawing on gender role and upper echelons theory, two explanations, strategic differentiation and structural constraints, are used to derive hypotheses and interpret results but are not measured directly. The analysis covers 575 Serbian accommodation businesses with 2024 operating revenue above RSD 10 million, 461 (80.2%) of which are hotels, using data from the Serbian Business Registers Agency; for brevity, all are referred to as hotels. Hotels are compared by the gender of the Head of the Board and by female board representation across ROE decile ranks, gross and net profit margins, and revenue. Additionally, a pooled regression with a gender × maturity interaction tests whether maturity moderates the association between female leadership and asset turnover. Female-headed hotels have lower revenues (p = 0.006) and rank slightly higher on ROE (decile ranks: Cohen’s d = 0.21, p = 0.023; Mann–Whitney test on raw ROE: p = 0.024) but have similar margins and return on assets. This ROE difference, like that associated with female board representation (η2 = 0.008), does not remain significant after Holm correction. The moderation hypothesis is not supported in the main analysis (interaction: B = −0.94; 95% CI [−2.25, 0.37]); because the interaction becomes significant when influential observations are excluded or down-weighted, this result should be interpreted with caution and does not rule out moderation. Within this sample, gender-related differences are thus small and indicator-specific; the evidence does not show that female-led hotels perform better financially.