Boards’ Gender Diversity and Firm Performance Before and after the Egyptian Revolution

Abstract

Given the endogenous and contingent nature of firms’ governance choices, it is not surprising that the results of prior studies investigating the association between board attributes and firm performance are mixed. In this paper, we exploit the presence of an exogenous shock represented in the Egyptian revolution in 2011 to assess the effect of gender diversity in the board on firm performance. Our results show that gender diverse firms perform better when their environment becomes more complex and unpredictable. The presence of foreign directors on the other hand has the opposite effect. Our results challenge the notion that diversity attributes are additive, and underscore the benefits of gender diversity in more complex and unpredictable contexts. Overall, we provide evidence that board structure/diversity-performance relationship is contingent upon the social, political and economic context, and changes in response to external shocks.