Paper Title
Does Female Management Increase Outreach of Microfinance Institutions?

Abstract
A unique aspect of microfinance institutions is their focus on outreach, i.e., their ability to reach the poor. The purpose of this paper is to find weather the presence of females in management positions (board members, CEOs, managers or loan officers) is associated with improved depth of outreach of microfinance institutions. We examine an original dataset of 226 microfinance institutions. The model used is a single equation model and follows the one used by in microfinance literature [55;56;581]. Our results suggest that the presence of female CEOs, managers and loan officers is related to the improved depth of outreach, while the presence of female board members is not. Various researches have found women in management position of MFIs to lead to a better financial performance of these institutions. When women are in control of MFIs, they also fair better in reaching out to the poor. Keywords - Microfinance, Outreach, Gender, Top management team, Corporate governance, Gender and finance.