Mulheres e o endividamento: um retrato sobre o Ibovespa de 2013 a 2019

Abstract

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the relationship corporate indebtedness and the presence of women on board. Considering a sample of 73 companies that had been part of Ibovespa from 2013 to 2019. Although the female presence in the labor force and finishing the college has been growing every year since 1960 and reached 61,4% in 2016, working on the companies’ board is only 10%. The reasons for this deficit revolve around two main points: (i) women has preference to be in other activities not the board and (ii) patriarchal societies don’t make room for women to occupy these positions. The movements to encourage the presence of women in these positions are present throughout the world, according to them, based on the qualities that they can add to companies, from higher returns to better relations with stakeholders arising from greater transparency and greater monitoring of the activities of managers. However, there is no consensus on these benefits and, even so, from what point women start to influence these results so that the simple inclusion of women may not be enough, and it is interesting that more than one woman is present and with different backgrounds forming a critical mass. Regarding the indebtedness of the companies that women are on the board the results are also not consensual and point to less indebted companies – denoting a preference for internal financing and the strength of the female presence to monitor managers – and also more in debt – so that women take as much or more risk than men. The results obtained point to less indebted companies, especially in the presence of a critical female mass. Market and accounting indebtedness were considered. The variables of interest were women CEO, women CFO, women chairman of the board, the presence of women independent of the position and the presence of women from a critical mass of 20% of women on the board and advice. The control variables were the usual ones adopted to study the determinants of capital structure. Thus, this work contributes to the strengthening of the idea of more diverse councils in gender that allows the expansion of dialogue with different stakeholders and performs the expected impartial monitoring and management function.