Dear Dominic, perhaps the following papers can point you in a useful direction:

Article The Business Case for Women Leaders: Meta-Analysis, Research...

Article Women in the Boardroom and Their Impact on Governance and Performance

Article Does Having Women on Boards Create Value? The Impact of Soci...

Article Female Board Representation and Corporate Acquisition Intensity

Article Women on Boards and Firm Financial Performance: A Meta-Analysis

Article Gender Diversity and Securities Fraud

the ethical values of the population may affect on that

H Dom:

I would look at Diversity.

Dear Dominic,

I think you can read the upper echelon theory and resource dependency theory.

Yang, P., Riepe, J., Moser, K., Pull, K., & Terjesen, S. (2019). Women directors, firm performance, and firm risk: A causal perspective. The Leadership Quarterly, https://doi.org/10.1016/j.leaqua.2019.05.004.

institutional theory and responses to egalitarian pressures in particular have been useful in our research. https://www.researchgate.net/publication/335910670_The_HR_lady_is_on_board_Untangling_the_link_between_HRM's_feminine_image_and_HRM's_board_representation

Dear Dominic,

These theories;

Human capital theory, Resource dependence, Resource-based view (RBV) theory, Leadership theory, Upper echelon theory; Gender characteristics

they work well in explaining the need of female directors on corporate board. You can use one or two to explain your argument and that depends on your topic.

Dominic Khie Yeen Hu wish you all the best !

Callen, J. L., Klein, A., & Tinkelman, D. (2003). Board composition, committees, and organizational efficiency: The case of nonprofits. Nonprofit and voluntary sector quarterly, 32(4), 493-520.‏

Article Board Composition, Committees and Organizational Efficiency:...

Dominic Khie Yeen Hu actually you can use the Critical Mass Theory and the Token Status Theory. In which in the order of which theory was used first would be The Token Status theory in which most Board practiced Tokenism for female BOD. You can actually use this to link with firm performance, yes ...but the proponents of the Token Status theory could lead to higher information asymmetry as just having one woman BOD is meaningless as she can be swept aside and she can't do her work of investigating the asymmetrical information experienced by the shareholders - yes you need to include more woman BOD on the Board as woman has investigative characteristics in which they are more risk averse and would ask more questions - this may or may not lead to firm performance as since woman BOD are risk averse it actually stifles creative decision making at the top level and reduces firm performance. Woman BOD on her own as practiced in Tokenism / Token Status theory is detrimental, while it reflects diversity but she is just a status symbol and nothing more. The advancement of the Token Status theory would be the Critical Mass theory in which for a woman BOD to advance from a 'pretty doll' to actually contributing and making important decisions on the Board. The Critical Mass theory posits that for woman BOD to make a difference there should be at least 3 woman BODs hence the 30% figure used by the 30% Club in the UK and other countries globally and the Malaysian Code of Corporate Governance 2017 under practice note 4.5 of recommended number of woman BOD of 30% for large PLCs on Bursa Malaysia.

We have thematical collections of free papers on board of directors at our web-site https://www.virtusinterpress.org/A-set-of-updated-thematic-paper-collections-from-Virtus-Interpress.html

I wish u to read Ping

Institutional Based View

I think RBV more suitable to be adopted as you also measure the performance

I think several theories such as human capital theory, critical mass, resource based, upper echelon etc can be used to explain the need for women on the board. You may also read this article by

Terjesen, S., Sealy, R. and Singh, V. (2009). Women directors on corporate boards: A review and research agenda. Corporate Governance, 17(3), pp. 320-337. doi: 10.1111/j.1467-8683.2009.00742.x

I do agree with Hadi, you can check with institutional theory. However, broadly agency theory is relevant here. But, you can check with alternative theory from Psychology perspective. This is because, gender issue is a relative matter. Female is assumed more risk averse, conservative. But it is difficult to generalize. I will attribute such attitude or perception as exclusion or selective perception.

Good luck. Thanks for sharing.

I suggest to consider (or at least mention) that the inclusion of women on BDs is also made for legitimacy building purposes or the particular case of family businesses where the appointment of female directors is often made by virtue of family ties rather than (only) for merit and qualification.

Among the recent articles have a look at Samara, Jamali and Lapeira (2019) Why and how should SHE make her way into the family business boardroom?. Business Horizons

Dear Dominic, I enclose a link to a free collections of corporate governance papers published in our journals since 2012 (more than 1300 papers in more than 50 thematical collections). I hope you will find it interesting to you in your research of board gender diversity and CG. https://virtusinterpress.org/A-set-of-updated-thematic-paper-collections-from-Virtus-Interpress.html

social categorization, social exchange theory, group process perspective