DOES BOARD GENDER DIVERSITY PLAY SIGNIFICANT ROLE IN DETERMINING FIRM PERFORMANCE? THE CASE OF CROATIAN LARGEST MANUFACTURERS

The aim of this research is to analyse whether the board gender diversity plays vital part in explaining firm performance. The research is performed using static panel analysis using the sample of Croatian largest manufacturers that operated in the 2015 – 2019 period. In order to conduct such analysis several variables relating to board characteristics are employed in the research including proportion of women in the boardroom, dummy variable whether a female is present on the board, Blau index and size of the board. Furthermore, a set of firm-specific, industry oriented and macroeconomic variables are encompassed by the analysis as well comprising of size, liquidity, leverage, inventory management, capital intensity, market structure expressed with concentration ratio and GDP real growth rate. In order to obtain more robust results, three performance measures are introduced ROA, ROS and NPM. The findings reveal that size, liquidity, leverage, inventory management, capital intensity and concentration of the industry play an important role in determining firm profitability whereas we have not found support for greater gender diversity in the boardroom in terms of superior performance. Similar results are also provided with robustness check. The paper contributes to the scientific thought in a way that it adds to the scarce empirical evidence on gender diversity in manufacturing industry in general and particularly in Croatian context.