Playing the Boys Game: Golf Buddies and Board Diversity

We study the participation of women in golf, a predominately male social activity, and its influence on their likelihood of serving on a board of directors. Exploiting a novel dataset of all golf games in Singapore, we find that woman golfers enjoy a 54% higher likelihood of serving on a board relative to male golfers. A woman's probability of serving on the board in a large firm or in a predominately male industry increases by 117% to 125% when she plays golf. In summary, our results suggest that "playing the boys game" facilitates women's directorships in publicly-traded firms.

Agarwal, Sumit and Qian, Wenlan and Reeb, David M. and Sing, Tien Foo, Golf Buddies and Board Diversity (December 12, 2015). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=2702742 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.2702742