Does female board representation influence firm performance? The Danish evidence

Board diversity has become a major issue within corporate governance where a number of studies seek to explore the impact of diversity on firm performance. The debate focuses on questions such as whether a corporation’s board should reflect the firm’s stakeholders or be more in line with society in general. This article uses a sample of listed Danish firms during the period of 1998–2001 in a cross sectional analysis. Despite that fact that Denmark has gone very far in the liberalisation of women, Danish board rooms are still to a large extent dominated by men. Contrary to a number of other studies, this article does not find any significant link between firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q and female…

• CB
  Copenhagen Business School