Do females on boards enhance firm performance? evidence from Indonesia manufacturing firm

Abstract

The impact of female directors on firm performance needs to be more consistent in the previously conducted empirical studies, which may be due to the endogeneity problem or specific characteristics (i.e., governance, industry, competition). Financial performance is the primary concern of investors. Supervising various types of ownership and boards is a concern in good corporate governance. This study examines the relationship between board sex diversity (in commissioner and director) on financial performance. Data were collected from manufacturing companies listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange. We analyzed the collected data using ordinary least squares with heteroskedasticity-robust standard errors to obtain unbiased standard errors of OLS coefficients under heteroscedasticity and quantile regression. This study found that only female director has a significant relationship with financial performance. These results have been tested for robustness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic. As there has been limited specific research using quantile regression about the female Board of the manufacturing industry during the COVID pandemic in Asia and may be helpful after this period (endemic and routine period), the study is considered to contribute to academic research and practice in Asian business.