Gender Discrimination among Taiwanese Top Executives

Tzu-I Wang, National Chengchi University (NCCU)
Jennjou Chen, National Chengchi University (NCCU)

The main propose of this paper is to empirically study the ‘glass ceiling effects’, and investigate whether female workers are in deed being discriminated against, particularly during the promotion process, at the top management positions in Taiwan. Data from the 2006 edition of “Top5000: The Largest Corporations in Taiwan”, is used to investigate whether there are gender preferences when a chairperson names a CEO. The total number of companies is 4,485. The team formation process is assumed as random matching, which is similar to Boschini and Sjögren (2007). The data shows that there are only few female top executives (about 6%). In addition, a chairperson tends to team with same sex CEOs, and it is especially noticeable among female chairpersons in the data. Besides, the empirical results from our random matching model further confirm that gender is neither irrelevant nor neutral when a chairperson names a CEO.