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This paper elucidates female underrepresentation on executive boards in the Dutch hotel industry through a “feminist” stakeholder perspective, which persists despite public opinion and government initiatives to resolve this enigma. It contributes to this discussion by examining Rhenish governance structures through a “feminist” stakeholder-focused rationale, complementing prevailing Anglo-Saxon shareholder-focused governance research.

Eleven in-depth, semi-structured interviews were conducted with hotel executive board representatives and five with sublevel management representatives. Saturation was achieved by interviewing all females on Dutch hotel corporate boards regarding their career experiences compared with those of female general managers and male counterparts.

This paper finds a prevailing “masculinist” perspective of an idealized shareholder-orientated executive and a “feminist” perspective of a humanized stakeholder-orientated executive expressed within the interviews. While the former sacrifices family for their career, the latter balances their family with their career. The former fosters presupposed gender norms, with females commonly sacrificing their careers while males sacrifice their families. Notably, most executives predominantly supported the humanized stakeholder-orientated executive, while recognizing that micro-, meso- and macro-structural barriers remain.

This paper addresses a lacuna in the ethical literature in exploring female executive representation in Rhenish stakeholder-focused governance structures, as opposed to Anglo-Saxon shareholder-focused ones. It found a “masculinist” perspective of an idealized shareholder-focused executive archetype and a “feminist” perspective of a humanized stakeholder-focused executive archetype. Notably, contrary to perceived business norms, several interviewees rejected the former as it is incompatible with family and work, instead seeking the latter which balances between family and work.

This study aims to investigate how the presence of female executives on the board affects a company’s capital structure decisions. The critical mass of female executives on the board was also considered to observe their impact on capital structure.

Samples were taken from nonfinancial sector companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange between 2012 and 2021 (3,707 firm-year observations). Capital structure was measured using four approaches, namely, debt-to-total asset ratio (DAR), debt-to-equity ratio (DER), short-term debt-to-total assets (STD) and long-term debt-to-total assets (LTD). The data were analyzed using panel data regression analysis, including a fixed effects model with clustered standard errors.

The presence of female executives on the board is significantly negatively related to capital structure as measured by DER and STD. The critical mass of women provided no evidence of a relationship with a firm’s capital structure. Robustness checks were performed, and the results were consistent with those in the main analysis.

Female executives can be appointed to management boards when determining a strategy to achieve the capital structure desired by a company.

This study increases the diversity of research in corporate governance by synthesizing various indicators from female executives into a single study to determine their relationships with companies’ capital structures. In addition, this study stands out by incorporating four distinct indicators for assessing capital structure and diverging from the norm observed in many other studies, many of which rely on just two indicators: DAR and DER. Moreover, it strongly emphasizes the unique economic, legal, social and cultural landscapes of developing countries like Indonesia in comparison to their developed counterparts, particularly Western nations.

This study investigates the impact of female directors on firms' financial performance by scrutinizing the different roles they are empowered to fulfill.

This study examines the impact of the roles performed by female directors on firms' financial performance using a panel dataset of the top 100 listed Indian firms over a period of 5 years. The study uses an appropriate panel data model for empirical analysis. For the robustness evaluation, a two-stage least square (2SLS) with the instrumental variable model were used.

The findings reveal a significantly positive impact of the total percentage of female directors on firms' financial performance. Further, by disentangling the impact of the total percentage of female directors between independent directors and executive directors, the study shows that independent female directors make a significant positive contribution to their firms' financial performance. By contrast, the performance impact of female executive directors was insignificant. In addition, the findings reveal that firms with a higher proportion of independent female directors outperform firms with a higher percentage of female executive directors.

This study is the first of its kind to unravel the performance impact of female directors and distinguish between the roles of independent directors and executive directors in the context of the emerging market of India, after the imposition of a gender quota for corporate boards.

The aim of our study is to explore the nexus between the gender composition of board and firm financial performance. We use the data of 114 listed banks from 10 Asian emerging economies. Data were extracted from the DataStream for the year 2012–2021. We apply fixed effect model to analyze the data. In addition, we use generalized method of moments (GMM) to verify our main findings. We find that both proxies of board gender composition which are the proportion of female board members and the percentage of female executives on the board have a significant impact on banks' financial performance. Findings suggest that female representation on board provides more insights of monitoring and optimal advisory capabilities and, therefore, gender-diversified board enhances firm performance. Females are more active in business matters and take more interests to fulfill their responsibilities. The results of our study provide useful signals for corporate and regulatory policymakers. Board gender disparities between enterprises should be better understood by all stakeholders to have the optimal combination of board members that ultimately lead to better performance of the firm.

This study aims to examine the determinants of the female representations on Chinese listed firm’s boards. This study also investigates the effect of gender diversity on corporate social responsibility activities.

The Tobit regression model is used because the data is censored and using ordinary least square regression can give spurious results. For robust check, the authors also used Heckman’s (1979) two-stage self-selection model to remove the sample self-selection bias.

The authors find that the female representations on the corporate board are positively associated with firm age, firm performance, corporate governance, family ownership, institutional ownership and managerial ownership while negatively related to firm size and state ownership. This study also incorporates predictors of the critical mass of women on the Chinese listed firm’s board. The study also tests the female-led hypothesis and concludes that the female representation increases in firms with female chief executive officer (CEO) or female chairpersons. The Chinese listed firms with gender-diverse board are socially responsible.

The importance of diversity in corporate boards has been demonstrated in light of the agency theory and the resource dependence framework. The results contribute to the previous literature by documenting the determinants of female representations on board, robust by alternative measures of gender diversity, firm size, corporate governance and estimation techniques.

The economic significance of gender diversity stirred the firms to increase female representation. The policymakers can understand the reasons for female underrepresentation in Chinese boards and can reform the regulation to enhance governance quality, non-state ownership and risk aversion among the listed firms.

This study contributes to the literature by providing empirical evidence on the key predictor of the world’s largest emerging economy, specifically the study focuses on the firm specific determinants, different governance attributes, ownership structure and firm risk measures. This study also seeks to answer if the presence of a female in the Chairperson or CEO position encourages the firms to hire more female directors or not?

This paper aims to analyze the role of female directors on CSR disclosure. It assumes the existence of faultlines when studying gender diversity and classifies female directors into three categories: industry experts, advisors and community leaders. It also examines the influence of the power of female directors as a moderator on the association between female director categories and CSR disclosure.

The paper bases on a dynamic generalized method of moments panel estimator which allows controlling for the unobservable heterogeneity and endogeneity and reduces the estimation bias.

Results confirm the double-sided nature of gender diversity, noting different behavior among female directors according to their experience and backgrounds. Moreover, the dominating owner position of female directors can balance and moderate the effect of female directors appointed for their technical knowledge or political and social ties. The results also confirm the necessity to not consider all women directors as a homogeneous group and explore the influence and interrelations of female faultlines on CSR disclosure.

The paper highlights the need to consider the specific skills, expertise, and connections of female board members when analyzing the effect of board composition, and supports the view that firms should emphasize the unique human and social capital of directors to understand how boards impact on firm strategies. Specifically, the authors support the recommendations of the European Commission (2011) regarding the need to increase skills and expertise when selecting new non-executive female board members.

At a time when most governments are introducing active policies that require firms to nominate women to boards, the understanding of the consequences of women’s presence on boards and the interrelations between female power and the diverse categories of female directors is timely and important.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper that provides empirical evidence to the scarcely studied area of the human and social capital of female directors’ roles in CSR disclosure, providing an alternative view of the role of women in corporate board effectiveness.

The authors investigate how a gender-diverse board, a gender-diverse executive team, or a female chief executive officer (CEO) impact bank balance sheet and equity risk.

Using panel data of U.S. bank holding companies over the period of 1992–2019, the authors conduct panel regressions with bank and year-fixed effects to analyze how female directors, female executives, and female CEOs impact a wide range of bank risk measures, controlling for the bank, board and executive characteristics.

The authors find female directors significantly reduce all types of risk. Female executives reduce some balance sheet risk but have an insignificant effect on bank equity risk. However, the presence of female CEOs does not significantly reduce bank risk-taking. During financial crises, female CEOs even increase equity risk.

The findings are important to shed light on the ongoing debate on how gender quota policy could be efficiently used to balance the need for gender diversity while ensuring corporate performance. It could also improve social welfare by guiding proper public policy to ensure the efficient use of social labor capital and curb banks' excessive risk-taking incentives.

The authors provide the first empirical evidence demonstrating that female directors and female executives in the banking industry have different impacts on bank risk-taking. The authors also provide the first empirical evidence that female leaders have a different impact on two different types of risks: balance sheet and equity risk. The study is also the first to analyze the impact of female executives over multiple financial crises.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between female executives, chief executive officer (CEO) tenure and corporate cash holdings in the context of the developing Southeast Asian capital market (Indonesia).

The sample was screened from 231 publicly listed companies in the Indonesian Stock Exchange. The period of observation was 2011–2017. Two measures were applied for corporate cash holdings: the ratio of cash and cash equivalent to total assets and cash and cash equivalent to net assets. Three surrogate indicators were used for female executives: female CEO, the proportion of female members in the board of management and the number of female members in the board of management. CEO tenure is the length of time a CEO has been a member of the board of management. This study uses panel data regression analysis, including the fixed effect model with clustered standard errors.

The empirical evidence indicates that female executives and CEO tenure are positively and negatively associated with corporate cash holdings, respectively, and both are significantly related. Additional analysis using lagged independent variables remains consistent with the main analysis, suggesting that corporate cash holding becomes higher as a female presence in the board of management increases.

Empirical tests set in Indonesia suggest that female executives are more conservative and risk-averse, thereby holding more cash with a precautionary motive. The findings also imply that CEOs with long tenure focus on long-term performance such as increasing research and development investments or capital expenditure, thus holding less cash. Accordingly, policymakers and regulators should promote diversity issues proportionally and advance to the board level.

This study contributes to the field of executive and CEO studies by enriching the empirical findings in related topics. In addition, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is one of the first studies applying two measures of cash holdings in the setting of a developing Southeast Asian capital market (Indonesia).

This study aims to explore the factors moderating possibly indirect relationships between gender diversity and its effect on bank performance. The causality of this relationship remains unclear.

The sample consists of all banks (n = 27) operating in Serbia.

The gender diversity-performance relationship is indirect. The gender diversity of executive boards positively impacts bank performance, over a threshold level. This is observed only in banks where gender diversity is extended to more than one level of executive authority.

Gender diversity should be fostered, particularly in small and competitive markets. The gender diversity-performance link is based on gender-related social interactions, which are interdependent and should not be taken into account as isolated factors.

To the knowledge, this is the first study to provide insight into indirect, gender related, moderatory interactions effecting gender diversity – performance link, in banking.