The Impact of Female Monitoring Effect and Executive Effect on Corporate Performance

This paper examines the association between gender diversity and firm performance for Chinese listed companies. Gender diversity effect is divided into monitoring effect and executive effect. The former one refers to woman as an independent director, while the later one is identified as woman as a high-position manager in company. In a sample of Chinese companies that issued IPOs since 2016, this study shows that, on average, female independent directors have no significant impact on firm-performance. However, there is a strong correlation between the number of women executives and corporate return on equity. It could be taken to suggest that Chinese listed companies do benefit from increasing gender diversity in the senior management teams, which could complement their rather poor corporate governance practices.