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Abstract

In recent years, studies on gender inequality have increased because of the 1995 World Conference on Women, which aimed to increase women’s participation in decision-making and exercising power. This paper investigates this research question: How does participation by gender on corporate boards and in directorships impact the rest of the decision-making positions? We conducted this study to give evidence of the gender inequality that exists on boards of directors and within leadership positions in Mexico with the aim of proposing strategies to remedy this situation. The hypothesis is that if men make up the majority of corporate boards and directorships, the difficulty for women to attain these positions increases. This exploratory study originates from the 2019 report Women in the Boardroom: A Global Perspective and analyzes reports of 29 companies listed on the Mexican Stock Exchange, including financial services, media technology, telecommunications, consumer products, industry, energy, and health sectors. The results show that in the countries studied, including Mexico, the predominance of men in directorships and corporate boardrooms prevails. We highlight that in countries where women have been included in decision-making positions, the presence of women in functional directorship positions is increasingly common. Although in Mexico a movement to demand the constitutional right to equality was followed by the establishment of positive measures in favor of women, the initiative to set gender quotas as a fair practice in forming corporate boards and filling directorship positions has not taken hold. This has motivated us to argue for a norm in favor of equality in the positions of directors and board members.

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