This project examines the impact of the gender diversity on corporate boards on business performance for US S&P 500 firms. Corporate performance is measured by market capitalization, earnings per share, revenue and total return. Gender diversity is defined as the total number of women on a firm’s executive board, the percentage of women on the board and the percentage of women in executive leadership at a firm. This research is important because it has economic implications for GDP and female labor force participation. Using data from the Bloomberg Terminal, Reuters and US Census Bureau, this thesis employs Ordinary Least Squares (OLS) regression to obtain beta parameter estimates of the effect of gender diversity on corporate performance. The effects of the independent variables; number of women on the board, percentage of women on the board, percentage of women in executive leadership at a firm, size of the board, whether the CEO serves as CEO and chairman, number of independent directors and whether the firm operates in the financial industry is tested on the dependent variables; market capitalization, earnings per share, revenue and total return.
