Women’s Presence on European Boards and The Performance Cycle of Value Creation as an Instrument to Achieve the Gender Quotas

Abstract

Value creation is a major claim of most companies. Mahajan (2017) argues that “value and value creation are natural to and basic in human behaviour and endeavour”, nevertheless women are often marginalized and impeded in their advancement towards leadership positions, where they could shape and influence the process of value creation. Many large companies in Europe include mainly men in supervisory boards and the women quota is often lower than 20 %. We offer an overview of the women’s presence on the boards of the EURO STOXX 50 companies and we develop a model, which presents eight steps in a strategic performance cycle showing how more women can be integrated in supervisory and management boards so that they can contribute to a better company value in general. The main contribution consists in offering companies a strategic instrument and concrete advices on how the women presence can be increased company-wide and the gender quota on boards can be achieved.