dc.description.abstract | The United Nations (UN) advocated the "Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women" in 1979, and many governments promoted relevant measures for gender equality all around the world. The issue of female labor force participation has received increasing attention in various international economic organizations and forums, and related research is constantly being proposed to encourage governments to value it. The purpose of these means is to eliminate the barriers of female labor force participation, and increase female labor force participation rate.
Owing to some social changes, such as the changes in demographic structure, higher education, the advancement of equal rights, and to fill the talent gap, Taiwan enacted the law " Act of Gender Equality in Employment " to meet the needs of enterprises, and also protect women′s rights in the workplace. Recently, although the rate of female labor participation has become higher, the proportion of women in management positions is generally low. "Glass ceiling effect" is used to describe this phenomenon, which means the potential restrictions and obstacles in the organization for certain disadvantaged groups, especially women.
This study applies the firm-level data of Taiwan listed and OTC companies from 2014 to 2018 in the Taiwan Economy Journal, dividing the industry into manufacturing industry and service industry and collecting some company information and financial data, such as the female proportion of directors and supervisors board, average wage, education level of employee, firm size. This study includes two dependent variables, labor productivity and total factor productivity, exploring whether companies can benefit from the diversity of gender, whether they can generate competitive advantages, and the relationship between diversity of gender and performance.
The empirical result shows that there is a highly positive correlation between labor productivity and the proportion of female employees and the female proportion of directors and supervisors board; however, the result in the manufacturing industry are not the same, the proportion of female senior supervisor has a highly negative impact on the labor productivity and total factor productivity in manufacturing industry. This study supposes that there is occupational segregation by gender in Taiwan’s manufacturing industry. The stereotype of gender hinders women from taking on more important missions, which will impede the development of enterprises. | en_US |