The influence of gender in the direction of Spanish cooperative societies on profitability and indebtedness: an empirical analysis

In this paper the claim for the market for a new business management to ensure the presence of women in decision -making to respond to new social needs addressed. Thus, this paper analyzes the influence of gender diversity of the directors on the profitability and the level of debt for a sample of 5,199 Spanish cooperatives. Unlike capitalist societies, these organizations have a number of peculiarities in their government, and that the partners are themselves major time, agents and customers. The study focuses on the Spanish context, where there is an open debate on the importance of women's business management, as in other countries, driven by the proliferation of legislation on gender equality, being, in addition, Spain, the pioneer in having specific legislation on Social Economy. The results show that cooperatives with greater female representation in theirs Boards have higher profitability. On the other hand, those Boards with a higher percentage of women show a lower level of indebtedness.

Narrative Deliberation? On Storytelling as a Necessary Component of Public Deliberation

This paper deals with the place of narrative, that is, storytelling, in public deliberation. A distinction is made between weak and strong conceptions of narrative. According to the weak one, storytelling is but one rhetorical device among others with which social actors produce and convey meaning. In contrast, the strong conception holds that narrative is necessary to communicate, and argue, about topics such as the human experience of time, collective identities and the moral and ethical validity of values. The upshot of this idea is that storytelling should be a necessary component of any ideal of public deliberation. Contrary to recent work by deliberative theorists, who tend to adopt the weak conception of narrative, the author argues for embracing the strong one. The main contention of this article is that stories not only have a legitimate place in deliberation, but are even necessary to formulate certain arguments in the fi rst place; for instance, arguments drawing on historical experience. This claim, namely that narrative is constitutive of certain arguments, in the sense that, without it, said reasons cannot be articulated, is illustrated by deliberative theory’s own narrative underpinnings. Finally, certain possible objections against the strong conception of narrative are dispelled.