We draw insights upon the literature on psychology and leadership and extend the literature on the female leadership advantage. We exploit a powerful setting in the context of China, where there is a sufficient presence of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) and female CEO leadership. We show evidence that female CEOs outperform male CEOs in terms of firm performance, when interacting with government ownership. We find that the improved firm performance by female CEOs is attributed to the increased profitability and operating efficiency. The magnitude of this gender effect is much bigger in central state-owned enterprises (CSOEs) than that in local state-owned enterprises (LSOEs). Our results are consistent with the explanations that (1) female CEOs in SOEs have better access to political resources due to their better communication skills; (2) female CEOs better adapt to the mitigated turnover-firm performance relationship (less pressure) in SOEs; (3) female CEOs are more likely to explore their management skills in a more secured and a less pressured work environment provided by SOEs. The results are robust to additional tests that mitigate the sample selection bias and other endogeneity concerns. These results are relevant to the strategic decision-making of CEOs, boards of directors, and policy makers.

CEO Gender, Government Ownership, and Firm Performance: Evidence from China.

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