Board Gender Diversity And Firm Risk-taking

In recent years,the participation of women in the labor market has gradually increased.Even in many developed countries,there are already relevant legislations that stipulate the proportion of female labor in enterprises.With the development of the economy and the improvement of women's education level,the female labor force has increased significantly,and more and more women have entered the highlevel management institutions of enterprises.Among them,the proportion of women in the board is also significantly improved.Women are significantly different from men in terms of personality traits,self-awareness and risk appetite.In particular,women's attitudes toward risk are significantly different from those of men.As a saysing goes,every coin has two sides.Firm risk-taking,on the one hand,in terms of enterprise development,certain risk commitments encourage enterprises to enhance their own technical input,promote long-term sustainable development of the enterprise,and even promote the entire economy.On the other hand,excessive corporate risk can lead to potential financial crisis,bankruptcy risk and other potential crises,and even affect the entire economic market.The board of corporate is the monitoring and management institution that is vital to the enterprise.Does the gender diversity of board has an impact on the risk-taking of firm? This paper using a sample of China listed firms from 1999-2017 to examine whether gender diversity of the board affects firm risk-taking.First of all,this paper combines the characteristics of gender diversity,board gender diversity,and corporate risk-taking research to demonstrate the impact of board gender diversity on risk-taking of firm.The results show that the higher the gender diversity of the board(that is,the higher the proportion of female directors and the larger number of female directors),the firm risk(that is,the total risk,systematic risk,and idiosyncratic risk calculated by the annual daily return)is lower.In further analysis,this paper analyzes the mechanism between board's gender diversity and firm risk-taking.We find that the negative impact of board's gender diversity on corporate risk-taking,the main mechanism is that the gender diversity of board has a significant impact on the company's R&D investment,being involved in the lawsuit,and corporate social responsibility commitment.Specifically,board's gender diversity is negatively correlated with corporate R&D investment.The higher gender diversity of board,the less the company facing legal risk,and the more corporate social responsibility of firm.In the robustness test,this paper firstly use profit volatility of the firm(ie ROA three-year rolling volatility)to replace equity risk to measure the firm risk-taking,and the results are still consistent.Subsequently,by distinguishing the nature of enterprise property rights,distinguishing the degree of regional marketization,dividing the sample before and after the 2008 financial crisis,and excluding the IPO sample within one year,the main conclusions of the subsample are still robust.Subsequently,it then discusses an empirical specification that takes into account the two sources of endogeneity,unobserved heterogeneity and reverse causality,this paper uses Heckman two-stage regression and instrumental variable to solve endogeneity problems.The results are still consistent with the main regression.Finally,the main conclusions of this paper are summarized,and corresponding suggestions are made to relative policies,enterprises and individuals.This paper discusses the impact of gender diversity of the board on the firm risk-taking and analyzes the impact mechanism.Further improved the theoretical research related to the governance structure of the firm board and the risk exposure of enterprises.In addition,a comparative analysis of the relationship between board's gender diversity and firm risk was conducted based on different property rights and regions.The research in this paper helps enterprises to realize the influence of female directors on corporate risks and thus know how to deside the ratio of female director on the board.Secondly,national policies have certain reference value for gender regulation in the labor market.At last,it is also useful for director to choose enterprises that are suitable for their own characteristics.