Gender Diversity in Corporate Boards and Firm Performance

This study examines influence of gender quota reform implementation on financial performance of public listened firms in countries, which have established obvious proportion of female on the board of directors. Based on balanced panel data set of 842 companies from 10 countries during the period of 13 years (2005 – 2017) we provided estimation of gender quota influence on financial performance, checked for cross country differences, estimated overall effect on financial performance of proportion of women on the board and of presence at least one women on the board. As financial performance measure, we taken Tobin’s Q. Finding of this study provide empirical evidence of the positive influence of gender quota in India and Belgium and negative effect in France and Germany. Finland, Germany and Israel have positive relationship between proportion of women on the board and financial performance. In India and Belgium proportion of women in contrast with gender quota have negative effect on financial performance. Presence of at least one women on the board has positive effect in all considered countries. Our findings provide useful information for companies, governments and investors presenting them that effect from gender quota and from gender diversity on the board depends from features of the country and its institutional environment. Limitations of this study include data limitations in the scarcity of qualitative characteristics of the board members such as their education, experience, personal skills and presence of data only for large publicly listed companies.