The role of board gender diversity and frequency of board meeting in enhancing firm performance: evidence from Public Listed firms in Bursa Malaysia / Vannesa Shann Saimon

Gender diversity in the boardrooms has been related with the corporate governance and firm performance and became the most vital subjects in the whole world particularly in Malaysia. The primary objective of this thesis is to investigate the role of gender diversity in the boardrooms and frequency of board meeting on firm performance. In order to achieve this objective, gender diversity is measured by the percentage of women directors sitting on the board, frequency of board meeting is measured by the total number of board meeting held within the financial year and the firm performance is measured by return on assets (ROA) and return on equity (ROE). This research used secondary data which comprises of 50 non-financial public listed firms in Bursa Malaysia from the year of 2007 until 2016. In order to obtain sufficient number of women directors, the techniques used to collect the data were a simple random sampling and purposive sampling. Based on the findings, the percentage of women directors sitting on the board and the firm performance measured by using ROA and ROE have a negative relationship evidence on 50 non-financial public listed firms in Bursa Malaysia. On the other hand, there is a positive relationship between frequency of board meeting towards the ROA and ROE. Therefore, it can be said that, in Malaysia, the larger the number of women directors sitting on the boardrooms have a negative effect on ROA and ROE, while the more frequent the board meeting held within a financial year will have a positive relationship on ROA and ROE.