THE EFFECT OF BOARD GENDER DIVERSITY ON FIRM PERFORMANCE: EMPIRICAL EVIDENCE FROM INDIA

Abstract

The epitome of the study is to scrutinize the impact of board gender diversity (BGD) on a firm’s accounting performance using a sample of top-listed companies in India. In this paper we have considered two measures of gender diversity, one is the number of women present on the board and the other one is the percentage of women present on the board. Firm performance (FP) has been measured through return on asset (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). We have used panel data regression (fixed effect and random effect) to analyze the effect of board gender diversity (BGD) on FP. Our results show that the percentage of women is positively and significantly related to FP; whereas, the number of women is negatively related to FP.

Keywords: Gender Diversity, Corporate Boards, Female Director, Firm Performance, Fixed Effect, Random Effect