Gender Diversity in Nomination Committee: A way to Promote Gender Balance on Board?

The promotion of gender balance within corporate boards is considered one of the tools to support the gender diversity in the society as a whole. Women in directorial positions generally perform as independent directors considering that the independence must or can be the criteria for the members of special board’s committees. This paper, by means of a descriptive analysis, would be a first step of a research project giving a picture of the situation of women on committee boards within the Italian listed companies, with a particular focus on nomination committee. This last assesses and considers the composition of the board and helps to prepare the list of candidates for board positions, according both with the ‘voting list’ rule (L.262/2005), and the gender quotas (L.120/2011). The research, considering 264 listed Italian companies, will focus on the gender composition of the nomination committee, in relation with gender composition of the board, and regarding different industries. Basing on the results, the paper aims at being the base for a future research aimed at highlighting a possible relation between the number of women in nomination committee and the gender composition of board, starting from the next boards’ appointments, which will occur with the L.120/2011 expired. This paper intends to fill the existing gap in the literature about women on board, emphasizing the role of nomination committee. Furthermore, this paper is a starting point for future researches extended to other countries, with potential practical implications, suggesting regulators to focus attention on committees’ composition, not only with regard to number and status of independence, but also with regard to gender.