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This paper aims to investigate the relationship between gender diversity in CEO positions and FinTech profitability by exploring the moderating role of the average board age on such a relationship.

A unique data set of Italian FinTech companies during the 2017–2019 period was used in an ordinary least square model specification. The model is designed to assess the relationship between the presence of a female CEO and FinTech profitability and the moderating role of the average age of governing board members.

The results of this study indicate that when the average age of the FinTech firm’s board members is relatively low, the profitability of those firms with female CEOs was not significantly different from the profitability of firms with male CEOs. However, among FinTech firms with relatively older board members, the profitability of those firms with a female CEO was lower. This empirical result seems to suggest that older board directors are less prone to recognize female CEO leadership qualities. This supports the need for FinTech firms to adopt good practices in board composition that favor gender inclusion and diversity on board.

The novelty of this study within the literature is that the empirical analysis added new evidence on the relationship between Female CEO and performance by exploring the moderating role of the average age of board members. Moreover, the empirical results of this study suggest specific conditions that could improve the profitability of female-led firms by removing the apparent biased perceptions about the quality of women in leadership among older board members.

This study examines the effect of gender board characteristics on the choice of sustainability report format in India. A sustainability report covers the environmental and social impacts of firms. It is presented either as an integrated report with the rest of the financial reporting to stakeholders or a separate document (stand-alone) with the advantage of communicating better information.

The study uses an inclusive sample of 800 firm-year observations between 2010 and 2019. The study applies the binary probit and the instrumental variable probit regressions to analyse the data from the Indian Stock Exchange.

The authors find that female chief executive officers (CEOs) are more likely to choose stand-alone reports over integrated reporting. The authors also find that female CEOs with a duality role are insignificant in choosing between integrated reporting and stand-alone sustainability reporting. Furthermore, the study shows that gender board diversity (percentage of women over total board size) and females of two or less are insignificant. However, three or more females on the board significantly and positively affect stand-alone sustainability reporting. Similarly, independent female directors are more likely to choose stand-alone reporting over integrated reporting. Policymakers must encourage sensitive environmental firms to employ more female CEOs over male CEOs because female CEOs are more likely to adopt stand-alone sustainability reporting.

The authors’ study adds novelty to research because previous studies have only examined a female CEO and sustainability. However, this study is the first to investigate female CEOs' and female board members' choice of sustainability report format.

This study aims to examine the moderating effect of co-CEO power gaps on the impact of female executives on firm value. Several studies have suggested that female executives have a positive effect on improving firm value. The authors would like to examine whether this relationship changes because of co-CEO power gaps.

For empirical analysis, 426 non-financial companies are selected from companies listed in the Korean securities market from 2013 to 2018. The relationships between dummy variables of female CEOs, outside directors, registered executives and Tobin’s Q are examined, and the moderating effect of co-CEO power gaps that scored various factors is verified.

The results of this study show that female executives have a positive impact on firm value, but the larger the co-CEOs power gap is, the weaker that impact is.

The mutual monitoring of co-CEOs substitutes for governance mechanisms, but if there are power gaps between co-CEOs, then the leadership cannot be equitably shared and the mutual monitoring effect can be weakened.

This study contributes to research on corporate executives by analyzing the relationship between female executives related to shared leadership and firm values in Korean companies. Especially, this study finds that the role of female executives is differentiated according to co-CEO power gaps by using the CEO power index that reflects the characteristics of Korean corporate governance.

This study aims to investigate the relations between CEO gender, power and bank performance. First, this study examines the relation between CEO gender and power. Do female CEOs possess less power than male CEOs? As women reach the top, do they hold similar or even higher levels of power as men? Second, this study investigates the relation between the CEO gender and bank performance. How do female CEOs perform? Is the relation between gender and performance subject to CEO power?

This study uses the following three performance measures: ROA, pre-tax ROA and pre-provision profit over assets. This study follows Finkelstein’s (1992) classifications and adopt five variables to measure the four dimensions of CEO power: duality and compensation share measure structural power; ownership captures ownership power; number of functional areas measures the power of expertise; and elite education captures prestige power. Logit model, ordinary least squares regression and quantile regression methods are used in the analysis.

In a sample of Chinese banks, female CEOs are found to have similar power and performance as male CEOs. As women reach the top, they hold higher ownership and greater prestige power than men. Female CEOs even outperform male CEOs in non-state dominated banks. Female CEOs show their impact through their power: those with higher compensation shares or greater power are positively related to bank performance.

Overall, the results show that as women reach the top, they hold a higher level of power than men. As females break through the glass ceiling, they perform better than males. Moreover, female CEOs show their impact through their power. Female CEOs who overcome the barriers are less traditional and more self-directed than their peers.

This study aims to use the gender socialization theory, critical mass theory and legitimacy theory to examine the female gender and environmental disclosure of family and non-family-controlled firms in India.

A sample size of 783 and 177 firm-year observations for family and non-family-controlled firms, respectively, between 2009 and 2020 uses descriptive statistics, a test of difference in means and panel regression with random effect assumptions for data interpretation.

The descriptive statistics show a significant mean difference between family-controlled firms and non-family-controlled firms in India. The first findings show that female chief executive officers (CEOs) and CEO duality have a positive and statistically significant association with environmental disclosure in a family-controlled firm but not in non-family-controlled firms in India. The second findings show that independent female directors have no significant association with environmental disclosure of family and non-family firms in India. The fourth findings with critical mass theory confirm the insignificant association of female directors on environmental disclosure of family and non-family firms in India. The results are robust to controlling firm-level variables.

Firms in the Indian context, through this study, assure stakeholders that family firms are better at improving stakeholder’s expectation of environmental accountability than non-family firms, especially where female CEOs are in charge.

This study adds the family perspective of the relationship between female CEOs and the environmental disclosure of listed firms in India. Also, female CEO duality and environmental disclosure add novelty to the research studies on gender and environmental disclosure.

The purpose of this study is to evaluate the tempering effect of the presence of a female chief financial officer (CFO) on potentially dominant chief executive officer (CEO) behavior expressed through the overvaluing of acquisition premiums.

This study used Securities Data Corporation (SDC) database data over an eight-year period to analyze the relationships between CEO dominance and the acquisition premiums paid in an acquisition deal. The study also analyzes the effect of CFO gender in curbing CEO dominance in the acquisition deals. The authors employ clustered standard errors ordinary least squares (OLS) regression analysis along with robustness testing, which supports the validity of our conclusions.

The authors expect and find that as CEO dominance rises, so does the acquisition premium; however, the presence of a female CFO in such situations significantly reduces the overpayment of the acquisition premium.

The study findings advocate for organizational change in the form of an increased presence of female CFOs within business organizations.

This study contributes to the accounting literature by timely exploiting a rising trend in which female executives are expected to become more prolific. The authors’ research indicates that their entrenchment into business organizations, thereby promoting gender diversity, produces beneficial outcomes for those organizations. It also capitalizes on the specific attributes of the CEO–CFO relationship, which lends itself to particular effectiveness in the hands of female CFOs.

The purpose of this paper is to examine how directors’ roles and social identities are shaped by gender and board life stage, using pre- and post-crisis Iceland as the setting. Recent theoretical work suggests the importance of directors’ monitoring and resource provision roles at certain board life stages; however, there is limited empirical evidence of directors’ identification with these roles as well as social role identification as a member of the board.

The authors contribute empirical evidence from interviews with 23 corporate directors in Iceland on individual identification with the director role of monitoring and resource provision, relational identification with the CEO role and social identification as a member of the board.

Prior to the crisis, male directors identified more strongly with resource provision and with their social roles and less strongly with monitoring roles. Compared to their male counterparts, pre-crisis female directors identified more strongly with monitoring and did not identify with their social roles. After the crisis, mature boards’ male director role identities were little changed; male directors continued to identify with resource provision and social identification, rather than monitoring, roles. Compared to pre-crisis, post-crisis female directors described greater identity with their resource provision roles and reported that male directors resented their attempts to fulfill their monitoring roles. In post-crisis, newly formed diverse boards, male and female directors reported very similar role identities which reflected balanced monitoring and resource provision roles, for example providing the board with ethical individual identities and unblemished reputations. The findings of this paper indicate that board composition and life cycle stage might have more impact on director identity than a pre- or post-crisis setting. These findings suggest implications for theory, practice and future research.

This paper provides further empirical evidence of the roles male and female directors identify with on corporate boards. Its originality lies in the context of the board work in terms of newly formed and mature boards, before and after the financial crisis, with differing gender composition (male-dominated and gender-balanced boards).

To provide insights into the experience of women aspiring to the CEO position, particularly regarding qualifications and compensation expectations.

The ExecuComp database of executives at 1,500 large US corporations from 1992 to 2004 was used to identify women CEOs and to examine gender differences in compensation of executives over that period. Additional information about the backgrounds of female CEOs was collected from company press releases and regulatory filings.

Women are not as highly compensated as men before becoming CEO but the few who reach the CEO position receive similar compensation as men. While women CEOs are younger on average than men, they have impressive work experience and education.

The study covers relatively large US companies that are publicly traded; thus, smaller firms and privately‐held firms are not included.

Impressive work experience, usually from within the company, and a strong education seem to be associated with promotion to the CEO position. Female executives should be more aware of the existence of gender differences in compensation at positions other than the CEO.

Much is written about the gender‐based duality of the leadership career and the overall gender gap in compensation. This study adds an in‐depth analysis of compensation at the top of the executive ladder to better understand who makes it to the top and whether they are equitably rewarded.

The purpose of this study is to examine the impact of gender and ethnicity of CEO and audit committee members (directors) on audit fees and audit delay in the US firms.

Audit-related corporate governance literature has extensively examined the determinants of audit fees and audit delay by focusing on board characteristics, specifically board independence, diligence and expertise. The authors provide empirical evidence that gender and ethnicity diversity in corporate leadership and boardrooms influence a firm’s audit fees and audit delay.

This study finds that firms with female and ethnic minority CEOs pay significantly higher audit fees than those with male Caucasian CEOs. The authors also find that firms with a higher percentage of ethnic minority directors on their audit committee pay significantly higher audit fees. Further, the authors find that firms with female CEOs have shorter audit delay than firms with male CEOs and firms with a higher percentage of female and ethnic minority directors on their audit committee are associated with shorter audit delay. Results indicate that female CEOs and both female and ethnic minority directors are sensitive to the market pressure to avoid audit delay.

The results suggest that gender and ethnic diversity could improve audit quality and the firms’ overall financial reporting quality.

This study provides insights to regulators and policy-makers interested in increasing diversity within a firm’s board and top executives. Recently, the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) and the European Commission have been pressing publicly traded companies to improve diversity among their directors. This study provides evidence and perspective on how diversity can enhance financial reporting quality measured by audit fees and audit delay.

Previous studies have not given much attention on the impact of racial ethnicity in addition to gender characteristics of top executives and audit committee directors on audit fees and audit delay.

We investigate the effect of female CEOs on corporate innovation using Indonesian companies. More specifically, this paper aims to answer the following research questions. First, do firms led by female CEOs innovate more or less than firms led by male CEOs? Second, does firm size positively moderate the effect of CEO gender on corporate innovation? Our research questions imply that female CEOs' innovative performance likely depends on the size of their firms.

Because the dependent variable is a dummy that equals one if the firm was an innovator and zero otherwise, this study employs probit analysis to test the hypotheses empirically. As an alternative test, we use a different measure of the dependent variable (INNOV-corporate innovation) by summing the firm's responses (yes/no) to nine innovation-related questions. Because this alternative measure of INNOV exhibits a count-data characteristic with non-negative integer values and more than 70% of the total sample did not engage in innovation activities at all, this study relies on the zero-inflated Poisson regression in the robustness test.

We have shown that firms led by female CEOs exhibit a greater probability of being innovators. Further, firm size increases the positive effect of female CEOs on firms' probability of engaging in innovation activities. Further, we also find that when female CEOs manage women-owned firms, their firms are more likely to engage in innovation activities.

This study cannot further investigate the causal relationship between CEO gender and corporate innovation (e.g. by analyzing whether CEOs with different gender affects firm innovation) because it relies on the World Bank Enterprise Survey data. Nevertheless, this study suggests that stakeholders, especially in developing countries like Indonesia, need to encourage more women to hold CEO positions, especially in larger firms, because women-led firms perform better in innovation activities.

Our study thus highlights that female CEOs outperform their male counterparts in innovation activities. These results support the argument that because of gender-based discrimination that they receive, female CEOs are greatly motivated to exhibit greater innovation performance. Further, it is more difficult for women to hold the CEO positions in larger firms because of these firms' more intense managerial job market.