This study examines gender equity – representation and compensation in top management – in listed family and non-family firms in the U.S. We integrate diversity, gender, and family firm perspectives, to understand how family firms vary from their non-family peers when making strategic choices about achieving gender parity in executive positions. Our empirical analyses confirm that family firms lag non-family firms in gender representation, suggesting they do not fully harness the potential advantages of female leadership. Our novel finding, however, is that family firms are successful in attenuating the gender compensation gap in their top management teams. Our results illustrate how family firms leverage their distinct ‘familial’ features to both preserve their socioemotional wealth and add to their inimitable resource cache, while also being socially responsible on a societal level. This study advances our understanding of the important role of ownership structure in bridging the persistent gender equity divide.

本研究考察了美国上市家族企业和非家族企业中的性别平等——高层管理人员的代表性和薪酬 我们整合了多元化、性别和家族企业的观点，以了解家族企业在制定战略在行政职位上实现性别均等的选择。我们的实证分析证实，家族企业在性别代表性方面落后于非家族企业，这表明它们没有充分利用女性领导的潜在优势。然而，我们的新发现是，家族企业成功地缩小了高层管理团队中的性别薪酬差距。我们的结果说明了家族企业如何利用其独特的“家族”特征来保护其社会情感财富并增加其独特的资源储备，同时也在社会层面承担社会责任。这项研究增进了我们对所有权结构在弥合持续存在的性别平等鸿沟方面的重要作用的理解。