Board Gender Diversity and Dividend Policy in Chinese Listed Firms

Abstract

This study investigates the relationship between gender diversity on the board and dividend payouts in China using a large sample over the period 2003–2017. Our results provide robust and strong evidence showing that gender diversity on the board is positively associated with cash payments of dividends. The empirical outcomes confirm that gender diversity on the board facilitates corporate governance and subsequently promotes dividend payouts. We demonstrate that gender diversity on the board has the greatest effect when the board has critical mass participation (three or more female directors) compared with only their token participation. However, independent female directors increase dividend payouts, while female executive directors do not have a significant impact. Furthermore, we extend the literature on the relationship between dividend payments and government ownership by providing evidence that gender diversity has a higher impact on dividend payouts for state-owned enterprises than non-state-owned enterprises. After controlling the endogeneity problems, our findings are reliable and robust. JEL classifications: G30, G35

Assessing the Effect of Board Gender Diversity on CSR Reporting Through Moderating Role of Political Connections in Chinese Listed Firms

“…BGD is gauged using four different metrics. We used the Shannon index-SI (Shannon, 1948) as a comprehensive and superior measure of BGD, following the literature (Sial et al, 2018;Ain et al, 2021). In addition, consistent with previous studies (Liu et al, 2014;Trinh et al, 2020), we measured BGD using the Blau index-BI (Blau, 1977), a female director dummy (FDM), and the percentage of female directors (FDBD) for robustness checks.…”

“…Hence, our results are insensitive to the endogeneity problem. Further, to deal with the problem of reverse causality, we used the lagged values of explanatory variables following the literature (Sial et al, 2018;Ain et al, 2021). Accordingly, we used the lagged values of the BGD measure to re-investigate our research hypotheses.…”

“…This suggests that gender diversified boards have distinct characteristics than non-diversified boards and that it is likely that these characteristics, rather than the presence of female directors on the board, cause firms to engage in CSR reporting. We used PSM and followed the literature (Liu, 2018;Ain et al, 2021) to tackle this problem. First, the logit model was used to predict the likelihood that the firm will appoint female directors, with the same control variables as in the main analysis.…”

Do CEO Duality and Ownership Concentration Impact Dividend Policy in Emerging Markets? The Moderating Effect of Crises Period

“…According to Ahmed et al (2020), dividend policy is a "puzzle" whose determinants are still poorly understood. At the same time, the increase in additional research work on the DDP-like Taleb and Ben Lahouel (2020); Duqi et al (2020); Tahir et al (2020aTahir et al ( , 2020b; Endang et al (2020); Grey et al (2020); Juhmani (2020); Ahmed et al (2020); Thompson and Adasi Manu (2021); Ain et al (2021); Bataineh (2021); Dissanayake and Dissabandara (2021); Hasan et al (2021); Trinh et al (2021); El Ammari (2021) and even other authors-justifies the fact that this research topic is a topical subject and that the debate on the reality of this famous financial phenomenon is not yet closed and still requires heated debate.…”

Board gender diversity and sustainable growth rate: Chinese evidence

“…Women on the board often also offer contrasting opinions, thereby adding to discussions regarding complex board decisions (Terjesen et al, 2009;Ye et al, 2019;Zahra & Pearce, 1989). Adams and Ferreira (2009) highlighted that female directors are more aligned with a monitoring role, which provides researchers with a greater incentive to examine the association between female directors and several relevant issues aside from corporate performance, e.g., agency costs (Ain et al, 2020), efficiency in innovation (Xie et al, 2020), stock liquidity (Ahmed & Ali, 2017), earnings management (Luo et al, 2017), sustainability disclosure (Zahid et al, 2020), dividend payment policies (Ain et al, 2021b;, tax avoidance (Richardson et al, 2016), and sustainable investment (Atif et al, 2020).…”