Vertical segregation, innovation, and gender diversity in Spain’s industrial sector

Innovation is a general measure of the success of a company and shows a positive relationship with several key factors such as collaboration with universities and technology centers or belonging to medium- and high-tech sectors. While many studies have found that gender diversity in company management teams has a positive influence on companies’ economic success, few have focused on the impact that the inclusion of women in the board of directors has on product, process, and organizational innovation. This paper builds on previous knowledge about the determinants of innovations and shows that greater gender management team diversity, compared to male-only teams, positively affects the achievement of said innovations. However, these results change when we incorporate the size of the companies as a moderating variable. In this case, we identify a turning point corresponding to firm size in the impact of gender diversity on product and process innovations, but not for innovations in organizational methods, where the impact is positive and significant for both SMEs and large enterprises. Collaboration with universities and technological centers is an important determinant of innovation for both SMEs and large enterprises.