This paper investigates the effects on riskiness and performance of gender diversity in Italian bank boards. Italy deserves special attention because European comparisons for the 2000s show that it was among the European Union countries where women were least represented in bank boardrooms, and this gap remains even in a quota law regime. Our main econometric results suggest that gender diversity may have a positive impact on the credit portfolio riskiness and on profitability. Both results may be driven by women's higher risk aversion and their higher propensity to monitor activities, suggesting that women are “gold dust” for Italian banks. These findings, obtained by using a unique data set over the period 1995–2010 and by taking into account possible sources of endogeneity, support the effectiveness on bank performance of greater female presence on boards. Moreover, our econometric set-up could offer a benchmark for further analysis on gender diversity effects for many countries, where a gender quota law is still not in place.

中文翻译：

---

女性是“金粉”：董事会的性别多样性和意大利银行的业绩

本文研究了意大利银行董事会中性别多样性对风险和绩效的影响。意大利值得特别关注，因为欧洲对 2000 年代的比较表明，它是欧盟国家中女性在银行董事会中所占比例最少的国家之一，即使在配额法制度中，这种差距仍然存在。我们的主要计量经济学结果表明，性别多样性可能对信贷组合风险和盈利能力产生积极影响。这两个结果可能是由女性较高的风险规避和她们较高的监控活动倾向所推动的，这表明女性是意大利银行的“金粉”。这些发现是通过使用 1995-2010 年期间的独特数据集并考虑到内生性的可能来源而获得的，支持在董事会中增加女性人数对银行绩效的有效性。此外，我们的计量经济学设置可以为许多国家的性别多样性影响的进一步分析提供一个基准，这些国家仍然没有性别配额法。