| Positive impact on firm performance | Increased firm value, financial performance and CSR performance | Post and Byron (2015); Vafaei et al. (2015); Nadeem et al. (2019); Loh et al. (2022); Amadi et al. (2023) |
| Positive impact on decision-making processes | Enhanced decision-making due to a greater range of perspectives, abilities and experience | Ali et al. (2014); Hutchinson et al. (2015); Altrata (2022) |
| Positive impact on environmental and social reporting | Increased sustainability reporting, lower climate change exposure, increased CSR disclosure, increased voluntary carbon disclosure, green innovation and water disclosure | Kirsch (2018); Alodat et al. (2023); Dempere and Abdalla (2023); Papíková and Papík (2023); Peng et al. (2023); Trinh et al. (2023); Alkayed et al. (2024); Caby et al. (2024); Lakhal et al. (2024) |
| Positive impact on corporate governance | Enriched human capital, enhanced corporate governance, lower cost of equity and influence on women’s advancement at lower organisational levels. Reduced the downside risks linked to insufficient corporate transparency. Positive effects on ethical firm behaviours | Carter et al. (2010); Skaggs et al. (2012); Kirsch (2018); Jun et al. (2023); Maxfield and Wang (2024) |
| Impact of board gender quotas | Higher qualifications of newly appointed women, increased board meeting attendance, improved monitoring, increased board involvement in strategy and enhanced ESG disclosure | De Masi et al. (2018); Comi et al. (2020); Alkhawaja et al. (2023) |
| Influence on CEO and CFO behaviour | Greater propensity to force CEO departures following unfavourable share price performance, reduced earnings management by female CEOs and CFOs | Adams and Ferreira (2009); Gull et al. (2018) |
| Impact on financing | Lower financial distress level, enhanced leverage and lower cost of equity | Nadeem et al. (2019); Guizani and Abdalkrim (2022); Jun et al. (2023) |
| Mixed findings | Mixed results on the impact of gender diversity on firm performance and other outcomes | Adams (2016); Bernile et al. (2018); Kirsch (2018) |
| No significant impact | No significant direct relationship between gender diversity on boards and financial performance or market performance | Carter et al. (2010); Hutchinson et al. (2015); Post and Byron (2015) |