The impact of gender diversity in the boardroom on firm performance: A South African perspective

Abstract

The study employs panel methodology and Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) multiple regression to examine the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance for a sample of 137 Johannesburg Stock Exchange (JSE) listed firms during the period 2002 and 2011. The results show that board gender diversity among South African firms have been improving substantially since 2002 when King II came into force. In 2002, the average South African board had only 4 per cent of women and by 2011, this had increased to 13 per cent. Notably, the findings also show that large South African firms have a greater representivity of women on their boards than small firms. By inference this could mean that gender diversity has a positive influence on firm value as findings further show that firm value in large firms is higher than that in small firms. This study contribute to the debate of whether board gender diversity influences firm value and whether the South African government should consider adopting quota legislation such as in Spain, Norway, The Netherlands and France. The findings suggest that there is evidence of a business case to advocate the implementation of quota legislation in South Africa. Empirical findings proceed to confirm that theories of corporate governance such as agency, resource-dependence, signalling and stakeholding surely provide some support to understanding the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance.

BOD characteristics and firm performances: Evidence from Indonesia

“…This conclusion occurs with the alleged very small portion of the presence of female BOD which refers to the descriptive analysis found only 16.67% or 1 female per 5-6 BOD where 5-6 BOD is confirmed empirically in Table 2. The results of this study are consistent with previous work of Jonty & Mokoteli (2016) and Taufik & Fadila (2021) which states that the presence of women as directors of the company is still small compared to the size of the directors so that women do not have a significant effect on company performance. Because the number of female BOD is very limited, female BOD also has difficulty in providing innovation (Manita et al, 2020).…”

“…In contrast, Manita et al (2020) revealed that companies in France that have female directors tend not to provide innovation in decision making so that they do not significantly improve the company's performance. Moreover, Jonty & Mokoteli (2016) and (Taufik and Fadila, 2021) found a lower proportion of female BOD than male BOD, thus making women still unable to make significant decisions. Finally, men are popularly identified as risk-takers, independent and aggressive and vice versa that women are identified with more avoiding and not daring to take risks (Tahir et al, 2021;Taufik and Fadila, 2021).…”

Effect of gender diversity on the financial performance of insurance firms in Kenya

“…Similar to studies from developed markets, findings from emerging markets offer mixed results though a large number of empirical works show positivity between gender diversity and performance. While a number of studies from emerging markets (Julizaerma & Sori, 2012;Oba & Fodio, 2013;Shehata, 2013;Garba & Abubakar, 2014;Haldar, Shah & Rao, 2015;Jonty & Mokoteli, 2015;Tu, Loi & Yen, 2015;Oyewale, Oloko & Olweny, 2016;Hassan & Marimuthu, 2018; Lee-Kuen, Sok-Gee & Zainudin, 2017) report positive relationship, others (Yasser, 2012;Dabor, Isiavwe, Ajagbe & Oke, 2015: Kilic, 2015Abu, Okpeh, & Okpe, 2016;Solakoglu & Demir, 2016;Hassan & Marimuthu, 2018) indicate either none or negative association between the two variables. Several studies done in Malaysia on the relationship between gender diversity and performance have also reported positive results.…”

Board composition in family and non-family innovative businesses

“…Despite the arguments in favor of a larger number of women board members in most companies (Modiba and Ngwakwe, 2017), their presence is still purely symbolic (Daily and Dalton, 2003;Jonty and Mokoteli, 2015;Terjesen et al, 2009).…”