What is the relationship between women's participation in the game of golf and their service on boards of directors? Sumit Agarwal, a professor at the National University of Singapore, studied just that. Exploiting a novel dataset of all golfers in Singapore, he and his co-authors found that woman golfers enjoy a 54% higher likelihood of serving on a board relative to male golfers. A woman’s probability of serving on the board in a large firm or in a predominately male industry increases by 117% to 125% when she plays golf. Joining the boy’s informal network appears to facilitate women’s entrance or success in the executive labor market.

To read Agarwal's paper, click here.