Gender equality and corporate governance in Slovakia

Gender representation on company boards is controversial and currently a highly debated issue in corporate governance. It is also considered to be an important tool of corporate responsibility in economic areas. Of all the progressive actions that the EU and Member States have implemented to revive the European economy, the issue of women’s participation in the labor market, particularly in corporate governance, merits more attention. Equality between women and men is one of the European Union’s founding values yet clearly there are signifi cant differences in pay by gender and representation of women on boards. One of the principles of corporate governance, the responsibilities of the board, is closely related to the issue of gender equality. According to this principle the board should ensure the strategic management of the company, the effective monitoring of management and should act responsibly towards both society and shareholders. These activities may be determined by many factors and one of them is gender equality. Advancing gender equality in the labor market continues to be a policy objective in many European Union countries. Wide national variations are evident in strategies and accomplishments towards improving gender equality at all levels of the labor market, including corporate governance roles. This paper focuses on the effect of gender diversity on corporate governance in companies listed on the Bratislava Stock Exchange. We measured the level of corporate governance by using a corporate governance index, compiled separately by company, and based on information from companies` annual reports. The paper uses a correlation analysis to examine the association between the representation of women on boards and the level of corporate governance. To the best of our knowledge, this is the fi rst paper to investigate the link between corporate governance and gender equality in companies on the Bratislava Stock Exchange.