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This study aims to understand the dynamics of Australian boards by focusing on the influence of board gender diversity on firms' cash holdings, within the distinctive Australian “if not, why not” regulatory framework.

The study uses ordinary least squares (OLS), fixed effects, generalized method of moments (GMM) and quasi-experimental methods such as difference-in-differences and propensity score matching to analyze the data.

There is a significantly negative relationship between board gender diversity and corporate cash holdings. This relationship is more pronounced when two or more female directors are on the board, supporting the critical mass theory. The results also reveal that the observed pattern can be attributed to the heightened monitoring intensity of female independent directors. Our quasi-experimental methods and pre-post analysis reveal that the observed effects are genuinely attributable to the increase in board gender diversity following regulatory reforms in Australia.

The findings provide practical insights for companies and policymakers, emphasizing the tangible effects of gender diversity on a company's financial strategy and corporate cash holdings. This information is crucial for organizations aiming to make informed decisions regarding board compositions and governance structures.

This research offers fresh insights into an important relationship between gender diversity on boards and corporate financial strategies in the Australian context, enriching the global conversation on the significance of gender diversity in corporate leadership.

The Companies Act of 2013 stressed upon gender diversity in the board of management considering the significant role of women toward the success of an organization. Following it, both public and private sector banks in India implemented the act from 2015 onward. This study aims to investigate whether its implementation has improved board gender diversity uniformly across public and private sector banks. Furthermore, the authors study the impact of board gender diversity on the performance of public and private sector banks in India.

Secondary data on listed Indian commercial banks for the period 2015–2021 have been used in this study that encompasses 15 commercial and 12 public sector banks. Return on assets, return on equity and Tobin’s Q are considered as the banking performance indicators in this study, while gender diversity of the board is measured by using Blau index. Furthermore, generalized method of moments has been adopted to analyze the effect of board gender diversity on performance of the Indian banking sector.

Empirical results exhibit that board gender diversity has been gradually improving since 2015 in both public and private sector banks in India. However, board diversity in case of public sector banks is seen to be lower than that of private sector banks. Furthermore, this study found a significant impact of board diversity on the performance indicators of both public and private sector banks.

This study gives a clear picture that board diversity of both public and private banks has remained quite low over the years. Apparently, women representation has been found to be less than 50% throughout the period of 2015–2021. As board diversity has significant impact on banking performance, it is important on the part of banks to take proper steps to improve the board diversity.

This study has added to the existing literature by highlighting on the divergence between gender diversity across public and private sector banks in India. It emphasizes on the need to improve gender diversity by a significant increase in the proportion of women in the board to create an impact on decision-making.

In recent years, US firms have increasingly integrated ESG performance goals into their executive remuneration packages. This study examines the relationship between board gender diversity and the tendency of firms to incorporate ESG metrics in performance-based compensation using data from US firms. The key questions this study addresses are: Are firms with more females on the board more likely to link executive compensation metrics? What components and types of ESG metrics are more likely to be adopted by firms with more females on the board?.

This study employs OLS regression, logistic regression, as well as instrumental variable, propensity score matching, and entropy balance methods to establish causality.

This study finds that firms with gender-diverse boards are more likely to shape their executive remuneration plans to be more ESG-oriented. The most significant positive relationship is observed with environmental and social sub-categories. The results also demonstrate that female directors are more likely to encourage firms to evaluate managers based on absolute and short-term ESG goals.

This study is one of the early studies that examine the adoption of ESG performance goals into executive compensation plans. It contributes to the existing literature by exploring the relationship between board gender diversity and the probability of firms incorporating ESG performance goals into executive compensation packages using a sample of US firms.

This study aims to highlight the impact of introducing women directors to board committees, thereby empowering them to contribute to decision-making, and as a result, influence firms’ financial performance in an emerging economy.

This study uses a fixed-effects panel data regression model to test the impact of gender diversity on corporate boards as well as board committees on firms’ financial performance. Two widely used diversity measures, the Blau index and the Shannon index, have been used to enhance the robustness of the results.

The findings suggest that gender diversity on prominent board committees (remuneration committee and nomination committee) positively affects firms’ financial performance when measured by the market-based performance measure, but it is insignificant when measured through accounting-based performance indicator. Furthermore, the benefits of gender diversity accrue to the firms only when women are part of prominent committees and are engaged in governance mechanisms, rather than just being appointed on corporate boards as a means of tokenism.

This study is among the first to investigate the relationship between gender diversity and financial performance through the lens of committee assignments. Moreover, the unique cultural and institutional setting offered by India, which is an emerging economy, provides a fertile ground for understanding the role of women leaders in the workforce.

Despite the significance of a gender-diverse workforce, there is a lack of comprehensive review of gender diversity and women's career advancement literature. Moreover, past literature focuses on women-on-board and other subsets based on outcomes like firm financial and non-financial performance, corporate social performance and board interlocks. The purpose of this study is to examine the research on gender diversity and women's career advancement through an analysis of 143 articles published during past decade. Theoretical frameworks, contexts and constructs-based contribution to scholarship were reviewed. The authors attempt to highlight key theories, constructs and contexts and provide direction for future research.

A comprehensive systematic literature review of 143 articles spanning January 2008–March 2023 about gender diversity and women’s career advancement was conducted.

Majority of the past studies have focused on women on board and top management team, and most of them have been conducted in the context of the USA and China. There is no specific industry which has been covered extensively. Resource dependency, resource-based views and agency theories are the primary theoretical frameworks used in the past studies. Furthermore, these findings suggest the scope to further focus on women’s retention and career growth initiatives, especially at levels other than top levels, for a stronger leadership pipeline.

This study has been conducted with a focused analysis of the context, constructs and theoretical frameworks, enabling future researchers to decide how and where to focus, to now strengthen retention of women.

This study aims to address gaps and limitations in the literature on corporate governance and stock liquidity. It explores the potential benefits of increasing female representation in corporate leadership, which has been a subject of debate and policy intervention in recent years.

Based on prior empirical studies and by integrating the insights of different theories, this study links gender diversity to stock liquidity and uses a multivariate panel regression approach.

The results show that gender diversity, both on the board and in executive positions, positively and consistently affects stock liquidity across different business cycles. The findings reinforce the notion that diverse executive leadership is crucial and influential irrespective of the prevailing economic conditions.

This study has practical implications for investors, managers and policymakers who are interested in the benefits of gender diversity in corporate leadership. It suggests that increasing the percentage of female executives and board members can improve stock market liquidity, which is a key indicator of market efficiency and firm value.

This study advocates for gender equality and diversity in corporate leadership, which can benefit society. It demonstrates that the presence of women directors can enhance financial stability and thus benefit the stakeholders and the community.

This study contributes to the academic literature by examining the impact of gender diversity on board and executive levels on stock liquidity in the US market. Previous research on this topic has mainly relied on French or Australian data. Moreover, this study extends previous work through examining the case of executives’ gender diversity. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to analyze the relationship between gender diversity and stock liquidity across different business cycles, providing a nuanced understanding of how economic contexts affect this relationship.

This study aims to investigate the effects of board cultural diversity (BCD) and board gender diversity (BGD) of the board of directors on environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance in the European banking sector using resource-based view (RBV) theory. In addition, this study analyses the linkages between BCD and BGD and knowledge sharing on the board of directors to improve ESG performance.

This study selected a sample of European-listed banks covering the period 2021. ESG and diversity variables were collected from Refinitiv Eikon and analysed using the ordinary least squares model. This study was conducted in the European context regulated by Directive 95/2014/EU, which requires sustainability disclosure. The original population was represented by 250 banks; after missing data were excluded, the final sample comprised 96 European-listed banks.

The findings highlight the positive linkages between BGD, BCD and ESG scores in the European banking sector. In addition, the findings highlight that diversity contributes to knowledge sharing by improving ESG performance in a regulated sector. Nonetheless, the combined effect of BGD and BCD negatively impacts ESG performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to measure and analyse a regulated sector, such as banking, and the relationship between cultural and gender diversity for sharing knowledge under the RBV theory lens in the ESG framework.

This paper aims to analyse the influence of workforce diversity on the firm’s likelihood to develop organisational innovations. Operationalising human resources diversity is not straightforward, and its effect has been rather overlooked in the context of non-technological innovations. This study analyses the impact of task-related diversity among research and development (R&D) unit workers and women R&D workers, in particular.

To estimate the impact of task-related diversity on firm propensity to undertake organisational innovation, this study uses a generalised linear model (GLM) – with a binomial family and log–log extension. GLMs are used to control problems of over-dispersion, which, in models with binary response variables, could generate inaccurate standard error estimates and provide inconsistent results.

This paper provides three important results. Firstly, employee diversity increases the firm’s propensity to engage in organisational innovations. Secondly, the influence of each facet of task-related diversity varies depending on the type of organisational innovation considered. Thirdly, gender has an effect on the innovation process; this study shows that women play a different role in the production of non-technological innovations.

This paper makes several contributions to the literature. Firstly, it makes a theoretical contribution to research on innovation management by considering the influence of human resources diversity on the development of non-technological innovations. Secondly, this study analyses the role of workforce diversity in an R&D department context to clarify the contribution made by women R&D workers.

Interest in environmental, social and governance (ESG) controversies is acquiring great relevance in the business and academic communities. Nonetheless, previous studies in the area have devoted little attention to how the market views ESG controversies. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to investigate whether ESG controversies are value-relevant to investors, as reflected in equity values. It also investigates whether top management team (TMT) gender diversity is likely to affect the association between ESG controversies and equity market values in the context of high-tech firms.

This paper uses a sample of high-tech firms listed on the STOXX 600 index during the period 2006–2022. The ESG data for the sample is retrieved from the Refinitiv Eikon database. This paper adopts a fixed-effect panel regression to test the hypotheses.

Based on the Ohlson’s (1995) valuation framework, the authors find evidence that ESG controversies are associated with a lower market valuation, suggesting that shareholders perceive ESG controversies as conveying negative information about future performance. The authors also find evidence that TMT gender diversity negatively moderates the relationship between ESG controversies and equity values, indicating that TMT gender diversity alleviates the detrimental effect of corporate controversies. These results remain consistent when using the return model of Easton and Harris (1991).

This paper throws more light on the economic consequences of ESG controversies in European high-tech firms. This is particularly important due to the increasing importance of ESG criteria in guiding investment choices. This paper also adds to the current literature by providing new evidence that the value-relevance of ESG controversies is affected by TMT gender diversity.

This study aims to explore the impact of board size, board gender diversity and federation age on the likelihood of having a female chair in National Sports Federations (NSF).

A quantitative methodology compares 300 sports boards in five countries (Italy, Portugal, Spain, Turkey and the UK), using data collected from NSF’s websites.

The board size and federation age have no significant impact on having a female board chair when the countries and the percentage of female directors are included in the model. When the number of women is measured in absolute value rather than in relative terms, the only variable that predicts a woman chair is the country. When the model does not include country differences, the percentage of female directors is key in predicting a chairwoman, and when the number of women is used as a variable instead of the percentage, a board’s smaller size increases the odds of having a chairwoman.

There are some limitations to this study which we believe provide useful directions for future research. Firstly, the authors have not considered the role of gender typing in sports activities which explains the extent that women participate in specific sports (Sobal and Milgrim, 2019) and the related perception of such sports in society. The social representation of sports activities classified as masculine, feminine or gender-neutral can hypothetically influence women’s access to that specific federations’s leadership. The authors included the country factor only partially, as a control variable, as the social representation of sports usually goes beyond national boundaries.

This study has implications for sport policymakers and stakeholders, and for institutions such as the IOC or the European Union that implement equality policies. If the aim is to increase female presence in the highest position of a sports board and to achieve gender equality more generally, other policies need to be implemented alongside gender quotas for the sports boards, namely, those specifically related to the recruitment and selection of the sports board chairs (Mikkonen et al., 2021). For example, given the implications of critical mass and its ability to increase more female’s engagement then the role of existing chairs acting as mentors and taking initiative in this objective may be warranted. Furthermore, attention should be paid to the existing gender portfolio of each board and its subsequent influence on recruiting a female chair, regardless of the organization’s age. Knoppers et al. (2021) concluded that resistance to gender balance by board members is often related to discriminatory discourses against women. The normalization of the discourses of meritocracy, neoliberalism, silence/passivity about the responsibility of structures and an artificial defence of diversity emphasise that equality should not only be determined by women (Knoppers et al., 2021).

When countries are included in the model, the results suggest that the social representation of a female board member is different from that of a female board chair.

The originality of the study is that it shows the factors that constrain women taking up a chair position on NSFs. Theoretically, it contributes to existing literature by demonstrating how a critical mass of females on boards may also extend to the higher and most powerful position of chair.