Impact of women and ethics committees on firms' value and financial performance

The literature on the impact of gender diversity on firms' value and performance is mixed. To shed light on these mixed results, we consider that other mechanisms in place, such as committees, could help gender diversity prosper. We investigate the joint effects of whether women acting on the corporate board or as executive officers, and the presence of an ethics and compliance committee (ECC), impact on firms' value and financial performance. Our identification strategy covers three different methods (i) system GMM, (ii) generalized structural equation model approach, and (iii) propensity score matching approach. The results show that firms' value and performance increase when a woman is in the corporate board or as an executive officer, and the firm has an ECC. Unlike previous literature, we show that ECCs, further than just a monitoring mechanism, support minority groups (women), and this has second-order effects on firms' value and performance. Besides, we provide evidence for practitioners to foster the increase of quotas for women in top executive roles and consider fostering the creation of ECCs.