Randomly picking the last paper you cite for example, we learn that Spanish companies with more women on the board have better financial performance. Seems like an open and shut case! But then buried deep in the paper, we also learn that the Spanish government has passed lots of sexually discriminatory laws that financially advantage companies that achieve arbitrary gender quotas, most notably, only companies with a certain level of female presence on boards can bid for public contracts.
The Spanish economy isn't the best. Big chunks of the Spanish economy is propped up by government spending originating in ECB quantitative easing and it's been that way for a while. If companies with male-only boards are being discriminated against in public procurement contracts, that by itself is sufficient to explain part of the difference.
That's a common problem with papers that argue more women on boards = more financial performance. Invariably they are studying countries that artificially tip the playing field towards such companies already, making it difficult to disentangle the different factors.
Re: your papers. I've looked at such research before. I've yet to see such a study that's as conclusive as it's made to sound. Last time:
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15490501
Randomly picking the last paper you cite for example, we learn that Spanish companies with more women on the board have better financial performance. Seems like an open and shut case! But then buried deep in the paper, we also learn that the Spanish government has passed lots of sexually discriminatory laws that financially advantage companies that achieve arbitrary gender quotas, most notably, only companies with a certain level of female presence on boards can bid for public contracts.
The Spanish economy isn't the best. Big chunks of the Spanish economy is propped up by government spending originating in ECB quantitative easing and it's been that way for a while. If companies with male-only boards are being discriminated against in public procurement contracts, that by itself is sufficient to explain part of the difference.
That's a common problem with papers that argue more women on boards = more financial performance. Invariably they are studying countries that artificially tip the playing field towards such companies already, making it difficult to disentangle the different factors.