Explaining differences in CEO gender diversity across industries: Do personality traits matter?

Women are severely underrepresented in the upper echelons. We show that female CEOs score higher (lower) than their male peers on personality traits that correlate positively (negatively) with leadership. Thus, it seems that female CEOs must be more “leaderlike” to emerge and survive on a non-level playing field. The degree of female underrepresentation is not uniform across industries. CEO personality traits differ 1) across industries and 2) between genders. Thus, we argue and show that the (lack of) alignment between the CEO personality traits of the industry and the personality traits of female CEOs is a likely explaining factor for the relative over- and underrepresentation of female CEOs in specific industries. Our findings are important in understanding one of the industry-related obstacles that women face in reaching the upper echelons in the corporate world.