Gender composition of board of directors in Spanish family firms and its influence on corporate’s risk preferences

Abstract

Considering the premise that many family firms tend to exhibit preferences towards the goal of preserving the business, in this work we conduct an empirical analysis focused on the relationship  between  gender  composition  of the board of directors and corporate financial decisions. According both to the theoretical approach  and  also  previous  literature  we are dealing herein, we expect that greater representation of women taking seats on board of directors would lead to the firm to show a propensity  of  corporate  strategies  oriented to an increase of liquidity and a decrease of leverage.  Using  a  sample  containing  about a thousand Spanish family firms, our results confirm those propositions which suggest that the higher proportion of women directors is associated with the more financial conservatism and with the less appetite for risk.