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This study aims to examine the nonlinear threshold effect of female board gender diversity (FBGD) on debt financing (DF) and equity financing (EF) decisions arguing that the effect of FBGD varies/changes depending on the numerical strength of the women on the board.

This study uses seemingly unrelated simultaneous panel equation modeling of 19 listed firms on the Ghana Stock Exchange (GSE) between 2010 and 2021. Although natural logs of equity and debts are used to proxy financing decisions, FBGD is measured as a percentage of total female board members to total board members.

This study reveals a nonlinear inverted U-shape effect of FBGD on EF and DF options. Although this result implies that the positive effects transit to negative effects when FBGD reaches numerical thresholds 34.20% and 35.11%, respectively, it also suggests that the risk averse nature of women on EF and DF usage becomes more visible and intense when the percentage of women on board increases above the mentioned thresholds, respectively. Clearly, the effect gender diversity on DF and EF depends on the numerical strength of the women on a board.

These results suggest that corporate entities and managers must be careful in the formation and implementation of gender diversity policies as gender diversity policies can influence/change debt and EF decisions. In addition, the thresholds show that a smaller number of women on board is required to lower EF compared to debt and this highlights risk-aversion nature women toward riskier financing decision. Also, the nonlinear inverted U-shape nexus from FBGD to EF and DF confirms the inverted U curve theory implying that the numerical strength of females on boards is critical for financing decisions.

This study contributes to the “gender diversity-financing decision” literature by simultaneously conceptualizing and modellng debt and EF structures and providing an emerging economy perspective on how gender diversity nonlinearly affects financing decisions.

This study aims to examine how woman corporate leadership indicators and environmental, social and governance (ESG) disclosure in listed banks on Ghana Stock Exchange are related.

Data was obtained from the audited annual reports of the banks for the period 2006–2020. Empirical result estimation was achieved using Panel Corrected Standard Errors.

The result revealed that female chief executive officer (CEO), female board chairperson and board gender diversity are associated with higher disclosure of ESG issues in listed banks in Ghana in overall terms. However, in terms of individual disclosures, female board chairperson positively impacts social disclosure, whereas both female CEO and female board chairperson affect governance disclosure positively.

In this era of business where there is much emphasis on green business and investment by various stakeholders for purposes of ensuring business legitimacy, the result implies that banks must consider females to occupy the positions of CEO and board chairperson since that can help to improve ESG performance of banks.

In this era of business where there is much emphasis on green business, socially responsible investment and impact investment by various stakeholders, the result implies that banks must consider improving the representation of women in leadership since that can help to improve ESG performance of banks and hence ability to attract more investors.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study to provide empirical evidence from a developing country perspective in Sub-Saharan Africa that gender of bank leadership has implications for ESG disclosure.