A Board Gender Diversity and Firm Performance: An Evaluation of the Nigerian Banking Industry

Abstract

This is a brief account of research undertaken for a dissertation, A Board Gender Diversity and Firm Performance: An Evaluation of the Nigerian Banking Industry, submitted to the School of Accounting, Finance & Economics Leeds Business School, Leeds Beckett University in 2017 for the degree of M.Sc. Accounting. The dissertation was aimed at analysing the impact of presence of female board members on the profitability of banks in Nigeria. The study collected secondary data from annual reports and accounts of 11 sampled banks and analysed the data using multiple regression. The findings of the study suggested that the Return on Equity of the banks in Nigeria are not affected by the number of female Board Members of the bank, neither does their interest holdings in the banks or their positions on the boards. Therefore, the researcher recommends that existing or past female Board members of banks in Nigeria should make their presence impactful on the performance of the banks, by encouraging more female Board members given that the current number of women in the boards may not be large enough to make the figures significant.