Board gender: shrinkage or upsurge in wealth of shareholders

Abstract

Purpose-Shareholder wealth problems are becoming such a commonly recognized standard of corporate activity as a result of globalization and deregulation, which was intended to interact to improve economic growth and shareholder wealth. However, truth reveals that globalization and liberalization combined to deprive companies of massive profits since modern executives are more concerned with compensation, profits, control, and reputation than protecting shareholders' faith and trust. Thus, this study examines the impact of board gender on shareholders' wealth of listed manufacturing companies in Nigeria. Methodology-This study descriptive research design, the population consists of sixty-three listed manufacturing companies and a filter was used to pick the sample size of fifty-one, annual data collected from the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE) over twelve years from 2008 to 2019. And Pooled OLS regression analysis was adapted as the estimation technique. Findings-The result showed that female directors significantly upsurge the wealth of shareholders. Board gender has a positive influence on wealth optimizers MVS, Tobin's q and PRF. Also, Leverage, Firm Growth and Firm Age upsurge shareholders' wealth while firm size have no significant effect on the wealth of the shareholders. Conclusion-This paper concludes that female board directors can generate healthier financial decision and translates into positive effect on the wealth of shareholders. Therefore, Nigeria's manufacturing companies need to strengthen their efforts to increase the number of women on the board, as a number of these companies do not have a single female director on their board.