The Influence of Women in the Board of Directors on Brazilian Credit Union Efficiency

The literature has greatly explored the inclusion of women in managerial positions and how this affects the effectiveness of organizations, but the conclusions are still debatable. In this sense, this chapter investigates the impact of women's participation in corporate governance roles (members of the Board of Directors, members of the TMT, and as CEOs), while considering the importance of credit unions to Brazil’s economy and society. We identified a low presence of women on the executive board, fiscal council, and board of directors of credit unions based on a sample of 607 Brazilian credit unions. For the empirical analysis, we employed logistic regression estimation to investigate the impact of women's representation in management structures on the expansion of cooperatives' revenue. According to our findings, the revenue growth of credit unions with women in corporate governance roles (members of the Board of Directors, Fiscal Council, and Executive Board) is negative. Our study is particularly timely and adds to the previous literature on the effects of female leadership on the growth of credit unions. The regulatory reforms taking place in developing economies, notably Brazil, which call for the inclusion of more women in business affairs, increase the significance of our findings.