I haven’t seen any research on female CEOs being better or worse, and I suspect that the sample sizes are too small to come up with anything definitive either way.
What was common about 5 years ago was research suggesting female investment managers were better than male investmetn managers. Part of the explanation was that men would have higher turnover in their portfolio because they felt more pressure to be active and “doing something,” and this led to transaction cost drags on the portfolio. The other explanation was that women tended to run less risky portfolios, so the evidence seemed extra strong after 2000 and again after 2008 when you evaluated track records in environments where risk-taking was not rewarded. By contrast, in 1999, you would have seen higher risk portfolios generally more rewarded than less risky portfolios, but a study concluding that men were better portfolio managers than women in that environment would have been trickier to get publish at that time given the biases of academic publishers.
I’m not so sure that gender plays a strong role in these kinds of things. I think that the women that make it to the top of either corporate hierarchies or portfolio management may well have characteristics that make the traditional stereotypes about what women are like inapaplicable to them. You don’t get to become a portfolio manager or a CEO without being at least somewhat of a risk-taker, and quite often they will more of a risk taker than the average guy.
Possibly women process information in a more holistic way than men, but additional information is not necessarily something that improves decision making after a certain point. So even if there is a difference between how men and women perform, I suspect the campy explanations for it are unlikely to be the real reasons for the difference.
the women who break the glass ceiling and reach the top of their respective companies should do better than most men. the greater difficulty to attain the top position as a woman means the woman is likely more intelligent, ambitious and hard-working than the average male in a similar position (CEO, President, CFO, COO, etc). women are known to be more risk averse but those who become CEOs had to take some chances. maybe those women at the top are a nice mix of risk tolerant and risk averse and are better at allocating capital.
furthermore, if women one day represent 50% of all CEO and c-suite jobs, i doubt we’ll notice any difference between companies led by women and companies led by men.
The only woman I have ever had to answer to (so far I have been in absolutely male-dominated environment) was during a job I had in TS at a Big4.
I was like one year out of school and she was a fresh manager. She was mid 30’s, stylish, still an attractive woman, but looked 40 from all that she had invested in her career. She was very aggressive, authoritarian, arrogant and unforgiving.
It was pretty clear that she was embittered from the feeling of having had to work twice as hard to get there.
Basically she was your prototype c*nt.
Once during a call with the counterparty’s M&A advisor it got kind of heated. Stupid bish started crying. Behind that mask, there was just a frail insecure person.
That was my only experience with women in position of authority so far.
I don’t want to stereotype…but I’ve noticed that many times. They portray this tough image but deep down there’s a lot of insecurity. Guys might be the same, but they don’t breakdown in public.
I’ve reported to a few different women, all back when I was in Big 4. There was one, she was in her 50s and didn’t give a sh*t. She had been around so long she was allowed to cherry pick her teams, there was no stress, no confrontation. Another one was on this team, she was the 3rd year associate and she was a raging bish. Always trying to make sure she was right (even when I, the guy who had been there 6 weeks, was right and she was wrong). She was toxic. The third wasn’t too bad, but she also wasn’t pleasant to work with. She had no personality so she was impossible to read. My favorite was the 4th. She was hot, blonde, wore barely there dresses. Since I wound up quitting that job months later, I still regret not trying to sleep with her, particularly as I was leaving her and the project for a new one.
All told though, I much prefer reporting to other men. We’re much easier to read, don’t BS/more direct, etc.