Gender Equality and the Risk Assessment of Corporate Financialization:An Analysis of the Increase in the Proportion of Female Executives

This paper empirically investigates the impact of the proportion of female executives on the financialization of enterprises using a sample of listed companies in the Shanghai and Shenzhen stock markets from 2009-2018.Previous studies tend to conclude that female executives are risk averse,preventing firms from participating in high-risk financial investments.However,the results of this paper show that there is a positive relationship between the proportion of female executives and the degree of corporate financialization,with an increase of 1 percent in the proportion of female executives leading to an increase of 3.8 percent in the degree of corporate financialization.Further tests show that gender inequality is a possible mechanism influencing female executives'financial investment preferences in the unique gender culture context of China.This paper expands the research on the impact of non-institutional factors on corporate financialization,and also points out that unilaterally pursuing an increase in the proportion of female executives does not reduce the risk of corporate financialization,and that only an overall increase in the proportion of female executives can reduce the risk of corporate financialization.Improving gender equality at the social level can fundamentally reflect women's risk aversion characteristics and encourage enterprises to make more stable investment decisions.

Host selection by the autoparasitoid Encarsia pergandiella on primary （Bemisia tabacl） and secondary （Eretmocerus mundus） hosts

In autoparasitoids, females are generally primary endoparasitoids of Hemiptera, while males are hyperparasitoids developing in or on conspecific females or other primary parasitoids. Female-host acceptance can be influenced by extrinsic and/or intrinsic factors. In this paper, we are concerned with intrinsic factors such as nutritional status, mating status, etc. We observed the behavior of Encarsia pergandiella Howard （Hymenoptera： Aphelinidae） females when parasitizing primary （3rd instar larvae ofBemisia tabaci Gen- nadius [Homoptera： Aleyrodidae]） and secondary hosts （3rd instar larvae and pupae of Eretmocerus rnundus Mercet [Hymenoptera： Aphelinidae]） for a period of 1 h. Females had different reproductive （virgin or mated younger） and physiological （fed elder or mated elder） status. Virgin females killed a large number of secondary hosts while investing a long time per host. However, they did not feed upon them. Mated females killed a lower number of secondary hosts and host feeding was observed in both consuming primary and secondary hosts. It was common to observe host examining females of all physiological statues tested repeatedly stinging the same hosts when parasitizing, killing or rejecting them. Fed elder females parasitized more B. tabaci larvae than E. mundus larvae or pupae, while investing less time on the primary host than on the secondary host. They also para- sitized more B. tabaci larvae than mated elder females, while investing less time per host. The access of females to honey allowed them to lay more eggs.