Does the Achievement of Gender Equality in Society Reflect on Gender Issues in Corporate Governance: The Case of the West Balkan's Banking Sector?

Abstract

Driven by the idea that women do not realize their full potential in society based on not being equally paid, having lower education level than men and facing discrimination based on maternity leave have been a primary motivation to do the research on the following sources of data: HDI; GDI and GII indexes published for four West Balkan countries and average data of women on boards for the same countries experienced in the most developed and female-dominated industry such as banking. This idea helps us formulate primary research questions -if a country has a better human and gender development index it should have more women that actively participle in business and have a real influence on decision making. Our findings are in line with the fact that Slovenia and Croatia are leading countries in the West Balkan region in terms of the index mentioned, therefore shaping a better place for the position of women in society. On the other hand, Serbia has the lowest value of 2 out of 3 indexes. The similarity between bank board diversity can be found between Serbia and Slovenia. In those two countries, women occupy more positions on the executive boards, but fewer on the supervisory board. The situation is different for Croatia and Montenegro where more women are included in supervisory boards. Contribution is that in Western Balkan countries it is arguable that women have no real influence on businesses and results of operations in the banking sector despite the fact that the mentioned countries have quite a good ranking in the gender development reports.