Purpose: The investigation of the relationship between gender diversity and corporate risk-taking is a recent stream of research. In this study, the authors propose an answer to the following main question: What do the authors know about gender effects in corporate risk-taking and how should we proceed?Design/methodology/approach: In order to ensure the quality and the objectiveness of the literature review, the authors selected articles published in journals that are simultaneously ranked by the Chartered Association of Business Schools (ABS, 2018) and by the Journal Citation Reports (JCR, 2018), focused on the Board of Directors (BoD) and Top Management Teams (TMT).Findings: The literature review reveals that women's presence on the BoD and TMT impacts corporate risk-taking in different ways. Based on the analysis, it is possible to organize the extant findings in two major categories, according to gender measures, firm type and country of origin: (1) universal effects – women decrease firms' litigation risk, failure risk and operational risk while they have no significant effect on insolvency risk and; (2) contingent effects – women have contingent effects on financial risk, manipulation risk, total risk, idiosyncratic risk and systematic risk.Originality/value: Covering several different research fields, this study provides a comprehensive review concerning what the authors know regarding the effects of the BoD and TMT gender diversity in corporate risk-taking. The authors present a model summarizing empirical findings and propose a number of avenues for future research.

Purpose – This study examines the relationship between internal corporate governance mechanisms and firm risk-taking. Design/methodology/approach – This research comprises a sample of 38 non-financial Portuguese listed firms on Euronext Lisbon, over the period 2007-2017. To test the formulated hypotheses we use Panel Corrected Standard Errors (PCSE) models. Findings – Our results provide evidence that, in the Portuguese context, bigger young firms, with larger boards of directors and with a greater degree of independent directors, present higher levels of systematic risk. Our results are consistent across robustness checks. Originality/value – To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that is reported a robust incremental effect of the board size on firm systematic risk. This result contradicts the prevailing literature and opens a new debate, from the financial markets’ points of view, on the benefits of larger boards of directors in the mitigation of market volatility. Keywords – directors; board; volatility; stock returns; independence

This investigation analyzes the impact of board gender diversity on the financial policies of non-financial Portuguese listed firms between 2010-2019. The study applies the two-step Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) for econometric analysis. The results show that board gender diversity affects firms’ capital structure. While female directors have no determinant role in defining firm indebtedness levels, they significantly contribute to its structure. Our results demonstrate that female directors, particularly those with executive roles, consistently contribute to reducing firms’ long-term debt and prefer to issue short-term debt. Moreover, female directors tend to manage trade over financial debt, especially in older firms. Independent female directors play a significant role in smaller firms by decreasing long-term and financial debt. The study supports the notion that gender diversity on the board contributes differently to the firms’ financial policies. Additionally, the findings are in line with the assumptions of agency, resource dependence, and pecking order theories. This study shows that gender diversity promotes short-term debt as a substitute for bank loans to avoid increasing firms’ risk, which ultimately impacts the definition of financial debt levels.

Using a sample of 47 Portuguese and Spanish firms for the period 2010 to 2017, the authors study the relationship between female presence on board and firm's accounting (ROA and ROE) and market-based (MTB and Tobin's Q) performance. They find that women on the board of directors is positively related to firm's performance, as well as the gender of the CFO and the proportion of women on the listed key professionals, when we consider the market measures of performance, not being so consistent for accounting performance measures. Results were sensitive to the performance measure used. The results reinforce the political options of European Commission gender established quotas, revealing that in the Iberian countries these quotas are not being effectively implemented, even if results suggest that women on board in fact exert positive influence over market performance. This also led us to think that financial markets may also react in a positive way when the CFO of the company is a woman instead of a man, despite the sample limitations both in terms of gender and number of firms.

This chapter intends to contribute to the analysis of gender diversity and financial risk through a bibliometric review of the existent literature to understand the current state of financial risk research as well as to contribute to the analysis of the influence of gender diversity on financial risk. Although there is extensive research on financial risk, no recent study tries to update the current state of the research over the influence of gender on financial risk practices. This chapter describes the evolutional research studies published in the digital library Scopus, between 2010 and June 2021, and compares the results obtained in evolutionary terms. When the research is concentrated on the bibliometric analysis in the Scopus database and the keyword “financial risk,” it leads to a total of 15,979 documents. Regarding the analysis concentrated on the keywords “gender diversity” and “financial risk” for the period between 2010 and June 2021, the authors end with a final sample of 96 documents. Proposals for further research are provided based on the current state of the art.

Using a sample of 47 Portuguese and Spanish firms for the period 2010 to 2017, the authors study the relationship between female presence on board and firm's accounting (ROA and ROE) and market-based (MTB and Tobin's Q) performance. They find that women on the board of directors is positively related to firm's performance, as well as the gender of the CFO and the proportion of women on the listed key professionals, when we consider the market measures of performance, not being so consistent for accounting performance measures. Results were sensitive to the performance measure used. The results reinforce the political options of European Commission gender established quotas, revealing that in the Iberian countries these quotas are not being effectively implemented, even if results suggest that women on board in fact exert positive influence over market performance. This also led us to think that financial markets may also react in a positive way when the CFO of the company is a woman instead of a man, despite the sample limitations both in terms of gender and number of firms.