The recent Italian legislation introducing gender quotas on the boards of Italian listed companies (Law no. 120/2011, called Golfo-Mosca) has modified the structure of these governance bodies, tripling in a short time the number of women in the board. The article starts by this change to analyze, through the results of a web survey conducted on female directors, the consequences of the recruitment induced by the law. In particular, we deepen: i) the socio-demographic profile and the career path of the female directors; ii) their opinion about the Golfo-Mosca law and its outcomes. The research highlights the positive effects of legislation - new highly qualified women in the boards, the improvement of the decisionmaking procedures - and brings out some problems: the difficulty to start longterm changes affecting the situation after the validity of the legal obligation, and the difficult to change the company orientation in terms of equal opportunities.
Keywords: Gender quotas, board of directors, gender equality, female leadership