Corporate Ownership & Control / Volume 17, Issue 4, Summer 2020 100 A CONFIGURATIONAL APPROACH TO THE DETERMINANTS OF WOMEN ON BOARDS Maria João Guedes * , Alice Galamba Monteiro ** * Corresponding author, ISEG, University of Lisbon, Portugal Contact details: ISEG, University of Lisbon, Rua do Quelhas 6, 1249-078, Lisbon, Portugal ** ISEG, University of Lisbon, Portugal 1. INTRODUCTION The research about corporate boards has attracted the attention of scholars, practitioners, and policymakers. The typical board of directors has white men of middle age. As such, that fact generated the expression “male, stale and pale” (Myatt, 2014) or that the boards are exclusive clubs Abstract How to cite this paper: Guedes, M. J., & Monteiro, A. G. (2020). A configurational approach to the determinants of women on boards. Corporate Ownership & Control, 17(4), 100-109. http://doi.org/10.22495/cocv17i4art8 Copyright © 2020 The Authors This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (CC BY 4.0). https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/ 4.0/ ISSN Online: 1810-3057 ISSN Print: 1727-9232 Received: 08.04.2020 Accepted: 01.06.2020 JEL Classification: M14, G30, G40 DOI: 10.22495/cocv17i4art8 This study applies a qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to test how configurations of gender equality, masculinity, highly educated women, and happiness, alone or in different combinations, explain the presence or absence of women on the board of directors (WoB). The global solution has considerable explanatory coverage and presents four alternative combinations conducive to both the presence and absence of WoB. Overall, the results show that the absence of gender equality is almost a necessary condition for the absence of WoB. The other conditions, per se, are not enough to explain the presence or absence of WoB, but in different combinations they are. For example, the combination of highly educated women, gender equality, and happiness is the solution with a higher consistent value to explain the presence of WoB. In this study, we sought to contribute with a novel, and far-reaching way of considering the determinants of the presence of WoB, moving past the typical determinants of WoB such as board size and board independence, or board members characteristics (such as experience or age) and shifting the focus solely from the corporate context to broader social, cultural and political contexts. The study presents recommendations for academics, practitioners, and policymakers, particularly to consider different determinants of underrepresentation of WoB and how new initiatives shall be implemented to advance the field and transition to economies and societies with greater social justice and gender equality. Keywords: Women on Boards, Fuzzy-set Qualitative Analysis, Gender Equality Authors’ individual contribution: Conceptualization – M.J.G. and A.G.M.; Methodology – M.J.G. and A.G.M.; Software –A.G.M.; Validation – M.J.G. and A.G.M.; Formal Analysis – M.J.G. and A.G.M.; Investigation – M.J.G. and A.G.M; Writing – Original Draft –M.J.G. and A.G.M.; Writing – Review & Editing – M.J.G.; Visualization – M.J.G.; Supervision –M.J.G.; Project Administration – M.J.G. Acknowledgements: We acknowledge research support from Advance Research Center (supported through PTDC/SOC-ASO/29895/2017 and UIDB/04521/2020 project by FCT - Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia, Portugal). Declaration of conflicting interests: The Authors declare that there is no conflict of interest.