Gender Diversity in Corporate Boards: A Comparative Study of Pakistan and Norway

Abstract

With the increased attention given to corporate governance, there has been more focus on the lack of gender diversity in corporate boards. Within the context of corporate governance, this research focuses on the gender diversity in the boardrooms and to evaluate how the percentage of female directors on a company’s board affects the firm’s performance. For this purpose, Gender diversity in both Norway and in the Pakistan are studied, but this study more focuses on the Pakistan’s board gender diversity, legislations, implementation and its impact on company’s performance, this study also focuses on Norwegian experience and the impact of the Norwegian gender diversity rule. This study is conducted by a qualitative research and a socio-legal research methodology due to library based and its mixed nature of being legal and corporate respectively. This study is also based on primary as well as secondary sources. The results of this study show that there is observable performance benefit to adding more females to the board of directors. Companies found a significant and positive relationship between the percentage of women on the board and performance. These results suggest that if Pakistan decides to adopt strong legislation for corporations in relation to gender diversity and implement them; it will observe significant improvement in firm performance.