Added Perspective

Golf Buddies and Board Diversity

June 29, 2016

By Sumit Agarwal

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.

 

 

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