Anticipation Effects of a Gender Quota Law in the Board Room

Policymakers in Europe have recently begun to focus on the relative underrepresentation of women on corporate boards, and numerous countries are considering the implementation of gender quotas. In 2002, Swedish Deputy Prime Minister Margareta Winberg, supported by Prime Minister Göran Persson, threatened to impose a mandatory law if considerable improvements in board room representation were not achieved in the listed companies within two years. Our main contribution is that we estimate a pure anticipation effect of a gender quota law and that the effects are large in magnitude. Interestingly, the threat increased both the share of female directors and firm performance, a result which differs from other quasi-experimental studies evaluating gender quotas laws.