Abstract
In recent years, board gender diversity has become one of the most widely discussed corporate governance mechanisms due to its potential to improve firm outcomes. Nevertheless, empirical evidence regarding its influence on firm performance and firm risk-taking remains inconclusive, particularly in emerging markets. Therefore, this study investigates the impact of board gender diversity on firm performance and firm risk-taking using a sample of 41 Egyptian non-financial listed companies over the period 2020–2024. Firm performance is measured using Return on Assets (ROA) and Tobin's Q (TQ), while firm risk-taking is proxied by the standard deviation of return on assets (SDROA) and leverage (LEV). The findings reveal that board gender diversity is positively and significantly associated with both accounting-based and market-based measures of firm performance. However, mixed evidence is observed regarding firm risk-taking: board gender diversity has no significant effect on operational risk-taking but exhibits a weak positive association with financial risk-taking, as measured by leverage. Furthermore, firm size is positively associated with accounting performance but negatively associated with market performance, whereas liquidity and board size do not exert significant effects across most estimated models. Overall, the findings suggest that increasing female representation on corporate boards enhances firm performance, while its influence on firm risk-taking depends on the proxy used to measure corporate risk-taking