The pervasive influence of informal institutions on female board integration into the corporate elite. The case of Argentina from 1901 to 2016”

LLUCH ANDREA; SALVAJ ERICA

Braga

Congreso; Seminario Internacional Las mujeres en el camino de la historia; 2021

Businesswomen have been largely invisible (or visible in the wrong way) and difficult to track in history. In the topic of corporate governance and gender, recent studies have emphasized that corporate elites have until very recently been all-male bastions. In this paper, we explore the case of women ́ incorporation in corporate boards of the 100 largest non-financial and 25 financial companies during the 20th and 21th century in Argentina. We use De Nooy, Mrvar, and Batageli’s (2006) methodology to analyze the evolution of networks. Later, we identified all female board members. The SNA methodology allowed us to analyze their position within the structure of the network of IDs. We collected information on family, career, professional background, and any other relevant information for all women included in the study. To gather these data, we relied on multiple sources, including personal websites, newspapers and magazine articles, oral histories, biographical dictionaries, and company histories, among others. For all female board members, we have been able to trace a basic profile.