Does Board Gender Diversity Impact Firm Performance in China’s SOEs?

Xiaochuan Tong () and Andrey Zagorchev
Additional contact information
Xiaochuan Tong: Northeastern University, Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Andrey Zagorchev: Rhodes College, Memphis, Tennessee, USA

Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP), 2025, vol. 28, issue 03, 1-54

Abstract: Given gender equality importance, we find that more female directors are significantly associated with better Chinese state-owned enterprises (SOEs) performance. Instrumental variables analysis shows that board gender diversity (BGD) is positively and significantly related to SOEs’ performance through profitability and operational efficiency. Using instruments and splitting ownership, we find that jointly BGD and central (local) state ownership significantly and positively affect firm performance through profitability and operational efficiency (profitability and capital structure only marginally). Robustness tests with sample selection, additional control, and alternative instruments confirm our results. Female directors outperform their male counterparts, supporting agency, double standards, and upper echelons theories.

Keywords: Corporate governance; board gender diversity; government ownership; firm performance; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: G15 G32 G34 G38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S0219091525500146
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wsi:rpbfmp:v:28:y:2025:i:03:n:s0219091525500146

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from

DOI: 10.1142/S0219091525500146

Access Statistics for this article

Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP) is currently edited by Cheng-few Lee

More articles in Review of Pacific Basin Financial Markets and Policies (RPBFMP) from World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Tai Tone Lim ().