Board Gender Diversity: A Review

Abstract

Gender diversity has gained significant attention in accounting, finance, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility (CSR) literature. This literature will enlighten the readers regarding the valuable understandings obtained from these studies, and to define knowledge holes and potential research paths. Though many papers are examining the determinants and consequences of gender diversity, however, this review suggests that organizations with weak corporate governance have a tendency to respond to the call of gender diversity regulations to capture the need of society. Additionally, the firm’s determinants and consequences of gender diversity vary across the countries based on local/regional demand, demographic attributes, and the nature of gender regulation. Most of the reviewed papers explore the consequences of firm gender diversity studies, and we classify these into (i) accounting implications, (ii) financial implications, and (iii) corporate governance implications (iv) CSR implications. This review indicates that corporate gender diversity has significant influences on organizations' financial reporting and corporate disclosures, financing, corporate investment, cash holding and dividends decisions, on overall corporate governance and socially responsible behavior. In analyzing the growing body of corporate gender diversity literature, this paper identifies critical flaws of past researches, and recommend suggestions for future studies.