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Editorial boards of academic journals represent a key institutional mechanism in the governance and functioning of the academic community. Board members play an important role in knowledge production and development of the discipline. The purpose of this paper is to enquire into the diversity characteristics of boards of accounting journals.

Drawing on a diversity framework that distinguishes between societal diversity and value of diversity, the paper examines two board characteristics: gender diversity and internationalisation. Moreover, it examines the influence of three journal and two editor characteristics on board diversity and analyses trends over time.

On gender, overall board trends are consistent with societal diversity and value of diversity: boards reflect the gender profile of senior academics. Further, female representation on boards is broadly consistent across the different journal nationalities; has improved over time; has experienced a convergence in “gender sensitive” sub-disciplines; and is influenced by female editorship. However, inequities appear to be present at the highest level: women appear to be less well represented than men as editors and women also have a lower representation on boards of higher ranked journals than on those of lower ranked journals. On internationalisation, once again, overall trends broadly reflect societal diversity and value at diversity. However, international scholars are less well represented on 4* boards than on 2* and 3* boards and on US boards than on Australian and UK boards. Further, there are signs of weakening US dominance in non-US journals.

Drawing on the diversity framework, this is the first study to comprehensively examine gender diversity and internationalisation of accounting boards.

Given the relevance of female directors in the governance of any firm, this paper aims to examine their effect on firms’ financial performance by investigating their general impact and segregating the same into different subgroups based on Kanter’s theory.

To achieve the purpose, this study selects a sample of the top 100 listed Indian firms for the period of 2014–2018 and gathers the data pertaining to the variables under consideration from the respective firms’ annual report and corporate database Capitaline Plus. For undertaking the investigation, the authors have segregated the sample into three groups, i.e. firms with boards having less than 10% of female directors are called skewed boards; firms with boards having female directors that range from 10% to 20% are called as tilted board; and firms with boards having sizable representation of female directors of above 20%. To examine the performance impact of overall female directors and their different subgroups, the authors have used a generalized estimating equation model. For the robustness test, the authors have used the fixed-effect model.

The authors find a significant positive impact of the overall percentage of female directors on the financial performance of firms. Additionally, the results indicate that boards with a titled group of female directors and boards with a sizable representation of female directors significantly positively impact firms’ performance. However, the authors fail to extricate any significant performance impact of boards with a skewed group of female directors.

First, the study reveals that despite prevailing nepotism in India, female directors, owing to their core characteristics, can create a favorable perception of firms in the market. Second, it also works as an eye-opener for regulators by revealing the minimum threshold for female directors that a board should have to exploit the benefits of a gender quota rather than mere compliance with the requirements of the Companies Act, 2013. Third, it implies that more gender-diverse boards can improve a firm’s financial performance only if female directors range between the thresholds of 10% to 20%. Finally, the finding is significant for changing the business culture in India, where institutions are traditionally less supportive of women than in other emerging countries.

Departing from existing studies, which provide evidence on the performance impact of the overall percentage of female directors, the study unveils the differential impact of female directors on firms’ financial performance depending on their level of representation on the board. To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study in the context of an emerging market to test Kanter’s theory.

This article addresses gender imbalances in senior company board decision-making positions and analyses the effects of applying gender quotas in European countries, through comparative and interpretative data analysis.

The results clearly demonstrate that those countries implementing quotas not only return higher levels of female representation on their boards of directors – approximately 40% – but also register higher rates of growth over both countries without quotas and those with quotas but without sanctions. Results furthermore suggest that the success of any quota system deeply depends on its formulated terms, on a country's corporate culture, on social receptivity and, at the micro level, on the sector an organisation belongs to.

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the relationship between female representation on corporate boards and intellectual capital (IC) efficiency – while prior studies focus on the relationship between gender diversity and firms’ financial performance.

Drawing on data from top 500 UK listed firms for 2007–2016 (3,279 firm-years), this study employs an adjusted-value-added intellectual coefficient as a measure of IC efficiency. Further, the two-step system-generalised method of moments has been applied to account for endogeneity issues.

The results reveal a significant positive relationship between female representation on boards and IC efficiency, including human capital, structural/innovation capital and financial capital efficiency. These results are robust to alternative proxies for the independent variable and difference-in-difference estimation.

The results posit that female representation on boards is associated with IC efficiency, which is vital for firms’ value creation and competitive advantage in the knowledge-economy era. The study also endorses current legislation to increase female representation on corporate boards.

This is among the limited studies to explore the role of female representation on boards in IC efficiency – while most prior studies relate IC efficiency to financial performance.

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?

The purpose of this paper is to document that religious adherence in the county of the corporate headquarter and educational attainment of the female director pool near the firm headquarters are influential to the likely addition of female corporate board directors.

The sample covers 1,630 unique firms and 30,369 unique directors covering a ten-year period to investigate the effects of religiosity and educational attainment.

The analysis reveals that while the number of women has increased in general terms, this change is mostly limited to boards that are increasing in size. Women do not tend to replace exiting male board members but are appointed when the board size grows. Therefore, while the number of women is increasing in absolute terms, they are not increasing in relative terms. In areas where religiosity is high, as measured by church affiliation and attendance, female participation in the boardroom is lower and a more educated and qualified female population leads to higher board participation. These effects supersede any regional effects.

The study adds insights into corporate board dynamic, providing new evidence concerning the impact of local conditions on board composition as well as additional information concerning the interplay of board dynamics and female board representation.

This paper aims to determine the association between corporate social responsibility (CSR) reporting of listed banks and female representation on boards while controlling for the impact of gender quotas.

Logistic regressions are used with bank fixed effects on a global sample of 285 commercial banks from 2005 to 2017.

There exists a positive association between the proportion of women on board and banks’ CSR disclosure. Positive association remains also after quota corrections for banks with either below- or above-quota female representation. Further, adding more women to boards than required by quota could affect boards’ CSR reporting in masculine countries but not in feminine countries.

The results are not generalizable to smaller listed banks and the used estimation approach does not enable to detect causality.

Policymakers interested in improving banks’ CSR reporting could introduce gender quotas.

Gender quotas can enforce banks’ sustainable behaviour.

First, it is the first study to thoroughly control for gender quotas while investigating the association between female representation on boards and CSR disclosure. Second, this paper moves forward from the so-far predominant concentration on single-country studies on banks’ CSR reporting. Third, this paper covers the aspect of a country’s masculinity-femininity as a factor that could influence the association between CSR disclosure and female representation.

This paper aims to provide an exploratory analysis of male and female directors, comparing the case of UK FTSE 350 boards of directors for 2010–2018, with Norwegian boards from 2002 to 2018, to examine patterns of busy female directors. This paper considers the differences between the effects of interest groups’ actions and those of quotas on the emergence of busy female directors.

This paper uses a longitudinal approach, providing an examination of both non-busy directors and busy directors sitting on the boards of UK and Norwegian firms, with a focus on female directors. Drawing on methods from social network analysis, several trends and patterns are mapped for the two corporate systems. The paper tests whether the proportion of busy male directors is significantly different from the proportion of busy female directors in the two institutional settings.

The results show there has been an increase in the proportion of busy female directors, whereas the level of busy male directors is slightly decreasing in the UK from 2010 to 2018. In Norway, following the introduction of gender quotas on corporate boards, there has been an increase in overboarded directors, especially female directors, along with the rise of so-called “golden skirt” directors. However, when compared to the UK case, the proportion of busy male and female directors is higher, suggesting that the emergence of the golden skirts in Norway is not a result of quotas alone.

The topic of busy directors has received increased attention in recent years, yet the gender of these directors is often neglected. This paper provides an overview of the characteristics of busy female directors for large UK and Norwegian firms, presenting avenues for future research.

This chapter aims to evaluate the relationship between the representation of women on corporate boards of directors and its impact on firm financial performance.

This study utilized both a systematic review and a meta-analysis, using a sample of 40 published studies, which gleaned financial indicator and observation data from 28 different countries.

As indicated in previous studies, while positive, there was no significant correlation found between the number of women serving on the boards of directors and firm financial performance.

The heterogeneity between the various studies analyzed may present difficulties in making general conclusions. The chapter could also be subject to publication bias, as the selection criteria included may indicate a need for further peer review. Future meta-analyses should include data associated with other financial indicators.

This study shows how composition ratios of men/women serving on corporate boards should be addressed in terms of proving for a greater diversity of leadership perspectives.

Previous systematic reviews and meta-analyses have analyzed country environments as moderators for the relationship between the representation of women on corporate boards and firm financial performance. The present study evaluates possible differences between the impact of the number of women serving on the board of directors on a variety of financial indicators (ROA, ROE, and Tobin’s Q).

Despite gender parity in the general working population, the higher up one looks in ranks within the firm the fewer women one finds. This under-representation of women in top positions at firms is purportedly even more acute in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). LAC is a large and increasingly important region of the world where women are well-represented in the workforce and are comparatively better educated than men. Documenting if this resource is utilized at full potential is therefore of crucial importance. The purpose of this paper is to document the level and impact of female representation at the executive level in the region, as no systematic study exists on this topic.

The authors collect an original database of publicly listed companies to determine prevailing gender ratios among board members and executives in LAC region. The authors then estimate whether companies with women board members are more likely to appoint women executives. Finally, the authors estimate whether measures of female leadership at the firm are correlated with company performance.

The authors find that women are as under-represented in LAC as in the USA, but much less so in the Caribbean. The authors find that companies with women board members are more likely to appoint women executives in LAC. The authors find that measures of female leadership at the firm are correlated with company performance but only regarding board membership and only when the proportion of women on the board is greater than 30 percent. Again composition effects are important. Overall, the authors conclude that the LAC region exhibits empirical regularities about under-representation of women in leadership positions at the firm that are very similar to those found for high-income countries in Europe and North America.

The authors are the first and so far unique systematic study exists able to document the level and impact of female representation at the executive level in the region.