Impact of women in boardroom on capital structure and firm performance

The objective of this research is to investigate the impact of women on boardroom on capital structure and company performance in Malaysia context. This study will focus on how gender diversity, ethnic diversity, literacy among women directors, female multiple directorships, frequency of meeting attendance and women independent directors affect the capital structure and financial performance of Malaysian public listed companies. This study selects 100 companies listed on the Bursa Malaysia through application of simple random sampling method for a period of two years, i.e. 2002 to 2013. Financial measures such as Tobin’s Q, Return on Asset, and Return on Equity ratios were used as measure of company performance, where as we use Debt to Asset and Debt to Equity ratios for capital structure measures in this study. With relevant quantitative analysis methods such as descriptive statistics, Pearson’s correlation and regression test, the findings of this paper shows that there is a positive relationship between female director characteristics such as numbers of female directors on board, female director frequency of attendance to board meeting, female director literacy and female multiple directorships with company performance. However, we found that these female director characteristics variables and capital structure shows negative relationship. In addition, there is a positive relationship between female ethnicity and female independent non-executive directors with capital structure. On the other hand, the results show negative relationships between female ethnicity and female independent non-executive directors with company performances