Skip to Content
MDPIMDPI

Advanced

JRFMJournal of Risk and Financial Management
PDF
  • Article
  • Open Access

29 October 2026

24 Pages

Board Gender Diversity, Critical Mass, and Firm Performance: Evidence from Thailand

and
College of Management, Mahidol University, Bangkok 10400, Thailand
*
Author to whom correspondence should be addressed.
J. Risk Financ. Manag.2026, 19(11), 854;https://doi.org/10.3390/jrfm19110854
This article belongs to the Section Business and Entrepreneurship
Version Notes
Order Reprints

Abstract

This study examines whether the share and number of women on corporate boards are associated with the financial performance of Thai listed firms. Using a hand-collected 2012–2021 panel of 584 firms listed on the Stock Exchange of Thailand, excluding financial institutions (5475 firm-year observations), we estimate models with firm and year fixed effects, with Tobin’s Q and return on assets (ROA) as performance measures. Critical mass is examined with three classifications from the literature: Kanter’s typology, a 30% threshold, and the number of female directors. With firm and year fixed effects, neither the share of women nor any critical mass category is significantly associated with Tobin’s Q. The ROA estimates are negative but imprecise, and they disappear when the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 are excluded. Confidence intervals rule out large effects in either direction. Models with firm fixed effects alone show significant negative associations, but these reflect common trends: Female representation rose during the period while the performance of Thai listed firms declined. The study adds evidence from an emerging market without a gender quota and with widespread family control, and it shows that omitting time effects can make common trends appear as an effect of board composition.

1. Introduction

Whether women on corporate boards improve firm performance remains one of the most debated questions in corporate governance. The case in favor is that directors with different backgrounds widen the information and viewpoints available to the board and make it a more demanding monitor of management (Carter et al., 2003; Post & Byron, 2015). Many governments have acted on this argument. Norway and France require women to hold at least 40% of the board seats of listed companies. In Asia, India requires at least one female director, Malaysia and Singapore have set targets of up to 30%, Japan has a 30% target for women in leadership positions, and South Korea requires large listed companies not to have boards made up of a single gender (MSCI ESG Research, 2020).
The evidence does not settle the question, and a systematic review describes it as mixed (Nguyen et al., 2020). Studies from India, Singapore, Malaysia, Vietnam, and other ASEAN markets report positive associations between female directors and performance (Duppati et al., 2020; Khunkaew et al., 2023; Rahman et al., 2023; Pham et al., 2025), others find no association (Firew, 2024; Jayaraman et al., 2025; Vetchagool, 2025), and some report that firms with more women on their boards perform worse (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Darmadi, 2011; K. Wang et al., 2024). Evidence from board gender quotas is also divided. Ahern and Dittmar (2012) report a large decline in firm value after Norway introduced its quota, whereas Eckbo et al. (2022) observe no significant valuation effect, and a recent meta-analysis of quota studies shows that significantly positive estimates are relatively common for firm performance outcomes, while stock market responses are more often negative (De Acutis et al., 2024). One reason for these mixed results may be that the effect of female directors depends on how many of them there are. Critical mass theory holds that a minority begins to influence group decisions only once it reaches a certain size (Kanter, 1977). The threshold most often proposed for boards is about 30% of the seats or three female directors (Konrad et al., 2008; Joecks et al., 2013; Kaur & Singh, 2026), and some studies find that women directors improve performance only beyond this point (Joecks et al., 2013; Jayaraman et al., 2025), while others do not confirm this pattern (K. Wang et al., 2024).
Thailand is a useful setting for testing these arguments. As Table 1 shows, women held 17.6% of the board seats of Thai listed firms in 2020, the third-highest share among the eleven Asian markets covered by MSCI ESG Research (2020), behind Malaysia and Singapore. Among the markets in the table that had no quota or official target for women on boards (China, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, Taiwan, and Thailand), Thailand had the highest share in every year from 2016 to 2020.
Table 1. Proportion of board seats held by women in Asian markets, 2016–2020.
Thailand reached this level through soft law alone. The Stock Exchange of Thailand (SET) recommended in its 2012 corporate governance principles that boards combine directors of different genders, skills, and experience (Stock Exchange of Thailand, 2012), and the Corporate Governance Code issued by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) in 2017 asks boards to balance qualifications, experience, gender, and age in line with the company’s objectives and the interests of its stakeholders (Securities and Exchange Commission, 2017).
Ownership is the second feature that makes Thailand of interest. Family businesses account for about 80% of the private sector and 60% of the economy (PwC, 2024), and at the end of 2022 they made up 57% of the companies listed on the SET and the Market for Alternative Investment and 43% of total market capitalization (Stock Exchange of Thailand, 2023). Compared with the vertically integrated and diversified family groups of Japan and South Korea, Thai family firms have less concentrated ownership and are often medium-sized companies focused on one industry. Female directors in these firms frequently belong to the controlling family and represent its interests on the board (Padungsaksawasdi & Treepongkaruna, 2024). Whether they act as independent monitors or as agents of the family is therefore an open question, and the answer may differ from what evidence from markets with dispersed ownership suggests.
Several studies have examined women on Thai and other Southeast Asian boards, but they differ from ours in focus or scope. Buachoom et al. (2023) study whether female directors and female owners moderate the negative effect of family ownership on firm value, Khunkaew et al. (2023) relate the share of women on board committees to the performance of firms in four ASEAN markets that include Thailand, and Vetchagool (2025) studies board diversity in 45 agribusiness and food companies over 2018–2022. Studies from Malaysia evaluate the effect of voluntary gender targets (Rahman et al., 2023; Firew, 2024), and Pham et al. (2025) examine the attributes of female directors in large Vietnamese firms. In a companion study, we found no association between female board representation and the ESG scores of Thai listed firms (Thamaree & Zaby, 2026). Compared with these studies, our analysis covers the years 2012 to 2021 for nearly all non-financial firms listed on the SET in 2021, uses hand-collected data on the gender of every director, and examines critical mass with three classifications, two based on the share of women and one on their number. None of the Thai studies above examines critical mass categories based on both the share and the number of female directors.
We address this question with a hand-collected panel of 584 non-financial firms listed on the SET, observed from 2012 to 2021, a period that begins with the first Thai guidance on board gender diversity, and relate the proportion of female directors to Tobin’s Q and return on assets (ROA) in regressions with firm and year fixed effects. Critical mass is examined in three ways: with Kanter’s (1977) classification of boards as uniform, skewed, tilted, or balanced; with a 30% threshold; and with the number of women on the board. The cut-offs follow prior studies, and we interpret all estimates as conditional associations rather than causal effects.
The results support neither hypothesis. With firm and year fixed effects, the share of women on the board is not significantly associated with Tobin’s Q, and no critical mass category differs significantly from all-male boards. The ROA estimates are negative but imprecise, they disappear when the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 are excluded, and the confidence intervals rule out large effects. Models with firm fixed effects alone show significant negative associations, but these reflect the common trends of the period, in which the share of women on Thai boards rose while the performance of Thai listed firms declined.
This study makes three contributions. First, it adds evidence from an emerging market that reached a relatively high level of female board representation without a quota and in which family control is common, a combination rarely studied so far. Second, it shows that neither the share of women nor the board categories proposed by critical mass theory are robustly associated with performance in Thailand, which is consistent with the mixed evidence in the literature (Nguyen et al., 2020) and with the absence of a valuation effect of the Norwegian quota reported by Eckbo et al. (2022). Third, it demonstrates that this relationship is sensitive to the treatment of time effects. Female representation rose in most Asian markets between 2016 and 2020 (Table 1), while firm performance moved with economic conditions, so models without year effects can attribute common trends to board composition. We discuss agency, resource dependence, critical mass, and faultline arguments that explain why positive and negative effects of female directors may offset each other, and we derive explanations that future research with director-level data can test (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Young et al., 2008).
Section 2 develops the hypotheses, Section 3 describes the data and methods, and Section 4 reports the results. The findings and their implications are discussed in Section 5, and Section 6 concludes. Appendix A reconciles the sample with the estimation samples and reports transitions between board categories and estimates with return on equity.

2. Theoretical Background and Hypotheses

2.1. Agency Theory and Board Monitoring

Agency problems arise when the parties to a contract pursue different objectives and bear risk differently, and when ownership is separated from control (Eisenhardt, 1989; Panda & Leepsa, 2017). The classic conflict is between shareholders and managers. In markets with concentrated ownership, a second conflict, between controlling and minority shareholders, is often at least as important (Panda & Leepsa, 2017; Young et al., 2008). Controlling shareholders can use their influence over the board to obtain private benefits at the expense of minority shareholders, so the independence of the board from the controlling owner matters as much as its independence from management (Young et al., 2008). Agency theory treats the board of directors as one of the main internal mechanisms for containing both conflicts, because the board can monitor, reward, and replace management (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Liu et al., 2014).
Board diversity enters this framework through the board’s capacity to monitor. Directors who differ from the traditional board member in gender, ethnicity, or background are more likely to question assumptions that a homogeneous board would accept, which makes board independence more effective in substance and not only in form (Carter et al., 2003). Female directors also bring knowledge, career experience, and values that differ from those of their male colleagues and so widen the board’s pool of expertise (Post & Byron, 2015). Adams and Ferreira (2009) report that female directors attend board meetings more regularly than male directors and are more often assigned to monitoring committees. Resource dependence theory adds a second channel. Besides monitoring, boards provide advice, legitimacy, and links to external resources, and directors with different backgrounds widen the human and social capital on which the board can draw (Hillman & Dalziel, 2003). A more varied board can therefore give the firm access to a wider range of information and contacts (Carter et al., 2010).
Agency theory does not, however, predict a uniformly positive effect of diversity on performance (Carter et al., 2010). Monitoring has costs. Adams and Ferreira (2009) show that the additional monitoring associated with gender-diverse boards raises firm value only where shareholder rights are weak and lowers it where governance is already strong. More heterogeneous boards may also take longer to reach decisions and may experience more open disagreement (Carter et al., 2003; Rose, 2007), particularly when demographic differences divide the board into distinct subgroups along a faultline (Lau & Murnighan, 1998). Where female directors are appointed for their family ties rather than their expertise, as is common in family-controlled firms in emerging Asian markets, a larger number of women on the board may strengthen the controlling family’s position instead of the monitoring of management (Darmadi, 2011; Low et al., 2015), which would add to the principal–principal conflicts described above. The theories reviewed here thus predict a positive association where female directors add independent monitoring and new resources, and a weaker or negative one where they add monitoring costs, slow down decisions, or strengthen the controlling owner. Which of these effects dominates is an empirical question that depends on the institutional setting.

2.2. Critical Mass Theory

Critical mass theory starts from the observation that the influence of a minority depends on its relative size (Kanter, 1977). Kanter (1977) distinguished four types of groups by their composition. Uniform groups contain only one type of member. In skewed groups, with ratios of up to about 85:15, members of the minority are tokens. Their visibility puts them under pressure to perform, their differences from the majority are exaggerated, and they are pushed into roles that fit the expectations of the majority. As a result, tokens tend to avoid conflict and conform rather than voice dissenting views, and a single person who differs from a cohesive majority finds it hard to change the view of the group (Kanter, 1977; Yang et al., 2019). In tilted groups, at about 65:35, the minority has enough members to form alliances and affect the culture of the group. Balanced groups, from about 60:40 to 50:50, allow members to be seen more as individuals, and the majority and the minority may form subgroups of their own.
Applied to boards, the theory implies that the influence of female directors is not linear in their number. Interviews with female directors indicate that a lone woman is often treated as a token, that two women are more comfortable but may still be seen as acting together, and that three or more women make the presence of women normal, so that they are heard as individuals and can raise difficult issues (Konrad et al., 2008). Board-level evidence is consistent with this view. Boards with at least three women are associated with greater firm innovation through their contribution to strategic tasks (Torchia et al., 2011), and boards with a critical mass of women are more active in requesting information and taking initiatives (Schwartz-Ziv, 2017). Critical mass thus changes how the board works, and it can increase the use of the knowledge, perspectives, and monitoring that female directors bring (Lückerath-Rovers, 2013).
The theory does not say where the tipping point lies, and empirical studies have used several thresholds. Common choices are 30% of the seats (Joecks et al., 2013; Strydom et al., 2017; Jayaraman et al., 2025), a balanced board with 40% to 60% women (Lafuente & Vaillant, 2019), and at least three female directors (Konrad et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2014; Jayaraman et al., 2025). A recent review places the tipping point at about 30% to 33% of the seats (Kaur & Singh, 2026), while evidence from Vietnam suggests that two women can be enough in some settings (Pham et al., 2025). Not all studies support the theory. Some show that the benefit of female directors declines as a second or third woman joins the board (Low et al., 2015; Zaichkowsky, 2014), Rahman et al. (2023) conclude that neither tokenism nor critical mass arguments describe Malaysian boards, and K. Wang et al. (2024) detect no U-shaped relationship between board gender diversity and performance in Japanese firms.
Critical mass theory describes the point at which female directors gain influence. Whether that influence raises performance depends on what the larger group of women does with it. If it brings independent monitoring and new expertise, performance should improve (Torchia et al., 2011; Joecks et al., 2013). Where it adds monitoring to governance that is already adequate, divides the board into subgroups, or strengthens a controlling owner, firms with a critical mass of women may perform worse (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Lau & Murnighan, 1998; Young et al., 2008). The theories of Section 2.1 therefore determine the expected direction of the association, and critical mass theory determines the board composition at which it should become visible.

2.3. Empirical Evidence and Hypotheses

Most studies report a positive or neutral relationship between female board representation and firm performance. Carter et al. (2003) and Erhardt et al. (2003) report that US firms with more women and ethnic minorities on their boards perform better. Green and Homroy (2018) use the gender of the children of chief executives as a source of variation in female board appointments and show that female directors, particularly those serving on board committees, improve firm performance. In Asia, Duppati et al. (2020) find that gender diversity improves performance both in India, which mandates female directors, and in Singapore, which relies on soft law. Rahman et al. (2023) observe that Malaysian firms that appointed a single woman after the 2012 governance code recorded higher ROA and lower stock volatility than firms with two or three female directors. Khunkaew et al. (2023) report a positive relationship between the share of women on board committees and ROA, though not Tobin’s Q, for firms in Thailand, Malaysia, Indonesia, and the Philippines. Pham et al. (2025) conclude that female directors improve the performance of large Vietnamese firms once at least two women sit on the board, with the effect driven mainly by female executive directors.
Other studies find no effect. Rose (2007) attributes the absence of an effect in Denmark to director recruitment through closed business networks, which favors candidates who share the values of incumbent directors and leaves qualified outsiders out. Marinova et al. (2016) observe no relationship in Dutch and Danish firms, where few women held board seats. In Malaysia, Firew (2024) shows that the soft-law target raised female representation without affecting performance. Jayaraman et al. (2025) detect no average effect in India but a positive one where women hold at least 30% of the seats or three seats. In Thailand, Vetchagool (2025) reports that gender diversity is unrelated to ROA and return on equity but positively related to Tobin’s Q. For Norway, Eckbo et al. (2022) conclude that the board gender quota had no significant effect on firm value.
A smaller group of studies reports negative effects. Darmadi (2011) documents lower accounting and market performance in Indonesian firms with more women on their boards and argues that, in family-controlled firms, female directors are often chosen for their family ties rather than their skills. Adams and Ferreira (2009) show that gender diversity reduces value in US firms with strong shareholder rights. Ahern and Dittmar (2012) report that the Norwegian quota was followed by a large decline in Tobin’s Q, which they attribute to the appointment of younger and less experienced directors. K. Wang et al. (2024) report a negative association between board gender diversity and performance in Japanese firms, and Bennouri et al. (2018) find that female directorship is associated with higher accounting returns but a lower Tobin’s Q in French firms.
Most of this evidence points to a positive or neutral effect. Agency and resource dependence theories also expect female directors to add monitoring and expertise, and Thai boards include a relatively large share of women. We therefore expect female directors to contribute to performance:
Hypothesis 1. 
Female board representation is positively associated with firm performance.
Critical mass theory adds that this contribution should depend on the size of the female group. Tokens tend to conform, whereas a larger group of women can voice independent views, influence board decisions, and contribute fully to monitoring and strategy (Kanter, 1977; Konrad et al., 2008; Torchia et al., 2011; Schwartz-Ziv, 2017). The expertise and monitoring that female directors bring should therefore affect performance mainly after women reach a critical mass. Consistent with this argument, Joecks et al. (2013) document a U-shaped relationship in German firms, with performance first falling and then exceeding that of all-male boards once women hold about 30% of the seats, and Lafuente and Vaillant (2019) find that balanced boards with 40% to 60% women perform best. Because the literature does not agree on a single threshold, we use three classifications taken from these studies: Kanter’s (1977) proportions as operationalized by Joecks et al. (2013), the 30% threshold that most studies propose (Joecks et al., 2013; Strydom et al., 2017; Kaur & Singh, 2026), and the count of three or more women (Konrad et al., 2008; Liu et al., 2014). Following these studies, we expect:
Hypothesis 2. 
The positive association between female directors and firm performance emerges once women reach a critical mass on the board.

3. Materials and Methods

3.1. Sample and Data

The sample covers the 664 firms listed on the SET in 2021, observed from 2012 or from the year of their listing. We begin in 2012 because the SET’s corporate governance principles issued that year were the first Thai guidance to recommend gender diversity on boards; the 2017 Corporate Governance Code repeated the recommendation (Stock Exchange of Thailand, 2012; Securities and Exchange Commission, 2017). The ten years from 2012 to 2021 therefore divide evenly between the two documents: five years from the issuance of the 2012 principles and five years from the issuance of the 2017 Code. Throughout this decade, female board representation in Thailand rested on recommendations alone, without a quota or a mandatory target, so our results describe Thai boards under this voluntary approach. The window also includes the pandemic years 2020 and 2021, and Section 4.6 reports the estimates without them. Several recent studies of board gender diversity in Asian markets also use panels of about ten years that end before 2021 (Khunkaew et al., 2023; Firew, 2024; Jayaraman et al., 2025), and Section 5.3 discusses what later years could add. As is common in this literature (Liu et al., 2014), the main analysis excludes financial institutions, whose regulation and balance sheets make their performance measures difficult to compare with those of other firms. Based on the SET industry classification, we removed 11 banks, 39 finance and securities companies, and 18 insurance companies, which leaves 596 non-financial firms. Because the sample was drawn from the firms listed in 2021, firms that delisted earlier in the period are not included. Board composition records are available for 584 of the 596 non-financial firms, which form the main sample, an unbalanced panel of 5475 firm-year observations. Financial firms tend to have more women on their boards, so we also estimate every model for all listed firms (6129 firm-year observations) to check whether the exclusion affects the results. Appendix A reconciles this sample with the estimation samples used in each model.
Accounting and market data come from the SET Market Analysis and Reporting Tool (SETSMART). Board composition was collected by hand from annual reports and SETSMART and supplemented with information from the SEC and company websites. SETSMART lists every director with one of the honorific titles Mister, Mrs., or Miss, and each director’s gender was identified from this title. For 337 firm-years, SETSMART reports fewer than five directors, and for 520 firm-years it reports no independent director (598 firm-years in total, about half of them in 2012–2015). Because Thai public limited companies must have at least five directors and listed companies must have an audit committee of independent directors, these records are probably incomplete. We keep them as reported in the main analysis. These records do not affect the board classifications at random. With few recorded directors, the share of women can take only extreme values, so these firm-years make up 21% of uniform and 25% of balanced boards but only 2% of skewed boards, whereas the number of female directors can only be understated. The proportion-based and the count-based classifications are therefore affected in opposite directions, and Section 4.6 shows that excluding these firm-years does not change the conclusions. In addition, the sample includes 56 listed property funds, real estate investment trusts, and infrastructure funds, whose board records refer to their management companies and account for 212 of these firm-years. Excluding them has nearly the same effect as excluding all incomplete records (Section 4.6). The number of observations differs across models because of missing values in the dependent and control variables (Appendix A).

3.2. Variables

We measure firm performance in two ways. Tobin’s Q reflects the market’s valuation of the firm’s future prospects, whereas ROA reflects realized accounting profitability; together they cover both the forward-looking and the backward-looking side of performance (Vetchagool, 2025). Following Adams and Ferreira (2009), Tobin’s Q is the market value of equity plus the book value of total assets minus the book value of equity, divided by the book value of total assets, and ROA is net income before unusual items and discontinued operations divided by total assets, expressed in percent. Tobin’s Q is the main dependent variable, and ROA serves as an alternative measure. Return on equity (ROE) also reflects the firm’s financial leverage, which enters our models as a control variable, so we use it only as an additional measure. ROE is net income divided by the book value of equity, computed as ROA/(1 − leverage) and winsorized like ROA. Firm-years with zero or negative book equity are excluded, and the results are reported in Appendix A (Table A3).
The main explanatory variable, PWOB, is the percentage of board seats held by women. To test for critical mass, we group boards in three ways. The first applies Kanter’s (1977) typology as operationalized by Joecks et al. (2013) and Lafuente and Vaillant (2019). Uniform boards have no female directors, skewed boards have at least one woman but fewer than 20% women, tilted boards have 20% to less than 40% women, and balanced boards have at least 40% women. The second uses the 30% threshold of Strydom et al. (2017) and separates boards with fewer than 30% women from boards with 30% or more. A third classification counts the female directors and distinguishes boards with one, two, three, and four or more women (Liu et al., 2014). These cut-offs are taken from the cited studies and are not estimated from our data. The balanced category includes all boards with at least 40% women, including boards on which women hold the majority of seats. Kanter’s typology is symmetric, so boards with more than about 60% women would form tilted or skewed groups with men as the minority. Because our hypotheses concern the influence of women as a minority on predominantly male boards, we do not create separate categories for female-majority boards. In all three cases, all-male boards are the reference group.
The control variables follow prior studies of board composition and performance. We include board size, the number of directors, because larger boards bring more expertise and monitoring capacity but may coordinate less efficiently (Singh et al., 2018). Board independence, the percentage of independent directors, captures the board’s capacity to monitor and advise management (Buachoom & Amornkitvikai, 2026); directors are counted as independent if they are classified as such under the SEC and SET definitions. Firm size, the base-10 logarithm of total assets in thousand Thai baht, controls for scale and access to resources (Duppati et al., 2020). Leverage, the book value of total liabilities divided by total assets, controls for capital structure and for the closer scrutiny that creditors apply to indebted firms (Duppati et al., 2020; Liu et al., 2014). Differences in regulation, competition, and complexity across industries also affect performance (Short et al., 2007; Marinova et al., 2016). Because no firm changes its SET industry group during the sample period, these differences are absorbed by the firm fixed effects described below. Table 2 summarizes the definitions.
Table 2. Variable definitions.
To limit the influence of extreme values without discarding observations, we use the base-10 logarithms of Tobin’s Q and total assets, winsorize ROA at the 2.5th and 97.5th percentiles, and winsorize leverage at the 99th percentile. ROA has extreme values in both tails. Leverage, in contrast, cannot fall below zero, and its extreme values occur only in the upper tail, where debt approaches or exceeds total assets, so it is winsorized only at the top.

3.3. Model Specification and Estimation

To test Hypothesis 1, we estimate the following model:
Perfit = β0 + β1PWOBit + β2BSizeit + β3FSizeit
            + β4LEVit + β5PIndeit + αi + λt + εit,
where i indexes firms and t years; Perf is either the logarithm of Tobin’s Q or ROA in percent; PWOB is the percentage of female directors; BSize, FSize, LEV, and PInde are board size, firm size, leverage, and board independence; αi is a firm fixed effect; λt is a year fixed effect; and εit is the error term.
To test Hypothesis 2, we replace PWOB with indicators for the board categories:
Perfit = β0 + β1Skewedit + β2Tiltedit + β3Balancedit + β4BSizeit
    + β5FSizeit + β6LEVit + β7PIndeit + αi + λt + εit,
where Skewed, Tilted, and Balanced are the Kanter categories defined above and all-male boards form the reference group. We estimate the same specification with the two 30% categories (WOB30less and WOB30more) and with indicators for one, two, three, and four or more female directors (WOB1 to WOB4+).
We estimate the models with firm and year fixed effects. Firm fixed effects remove time-invariant firm characteristics, such as industry and a stable controlling family, that may affect both board composition and performance. Year fixed effects remove shocks that affect all firms in a given year, such as changes in economic conditions and the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 and 2021. Section 4.6 shows how the results change without year fixed effects, with industry-by-year fixed effects, without the pandemic years, and without firm-years with incomplete board records. A Hausman test rejected the random-effects specification in favor of fixed effects at the 1% level, and fixed effects have been used for the same purpose in earlier studies (Adams & Ferreira, 2009; Darmadi, 2011). Variance inflation factors range from 1.04 to 2.68, with a mean of 1.70, so multicollinearity is not a concern. The Breusch–Pagan/Cook–Weisberg test indicates heteroskedasticity (χ2(1) = 135.49 for Tobin’s Q and 13.36 for ROA, both p < 0.001), and Durbin–Watson statistics of 0.48 and 0.74 indicate positive serial correlation in the residuals. We therefore use robust standard errors clustered by firm, which allow for heteroskedasticity and for serial correlation within firms (Wooldridge, 2016). Differences between adjacent categories are tested with Wald tests based on the same clustered covariance matrix.

4. Results

4.1. Descriptive Statistics

Table 3 reports descriptive statistics for the main sample. The logarithm of Tobin’s Q has a mean of 0.113, a median of 0.070, and a standard deviation of 0.251. ROA averages 6.47% (median 6.23%) and ranges from −12.1% to 25.4%. Women hold on average 20.0% of the board seats (median 16.6%), and the average board has 1.82 female directors among 9.41 members. These levels are below the 25% to 30% targets adopted in Japan, Malaysia, and Singapore (MSCI ESG Research, 2020), although the share of female directors varies widely across boards, from 0% to 100%. Independent directors make up 36.7% of the average board.
Table 3. Descriptive statistics.
Table 4 shows how board composition changed over the decade. All-male boards became steadily less common, falling from 131 in 2012 to 76 in 2021, and account for 18.94% of all firm-year observations. Skewed and tilted boards became more frequent and together account for about two-thirds of the observations (34.37% and 32.84%), while the number of balanced boards stayed between 67 and 85 per year (13.84% of the observations). Counting female directors gives the same picture (Panel B). Boards with one woman form the largest group (28.77%), followed by boards with two (23.85%), three (15.12%), and four or more women (13.32%), and all four groups grew between 2012 and 2021. With an average of about nine directors per board, the 40% threshold and the four-director threshold lead to groups of similar size: 13.84% of the firm-years have balanced boards, and 13.32% have at least four female directors. Because the fixed-effects estimates rely on changes within firms, Appendix A (Table A2) reports how boards moved between categories. Of the 584 firms in the main sample, 393 changed their Kanter category at least once, 184 crossed the 30% threshold, and 187 crossed the threshold of three female directors. Most changes are small. Of the year-to-year changes in the number of female directors, 84% involve a single director, and the within-firm standard deviation of female representation (7.5 percentage points) is about half the standard deviation between firms (14.6 percentage points).
Table 4. Board composition of the sample firms, 2012–2021.

4.2. Correlation Analysis

Table 5 reports pairwise correlations. The share of female directors is not significantly correlated with either Tobin’s Q (−0.0047) or ROA (0.0172), so any relationship between board gender diversity and performance is not visible in the raw data. Female representation is lower on larger boards (−0.1209), in larger firms (−0.1542), in more leveraged firms (−0.0558), and on more independent boards (−0.1035), all significant at the 1% level. Tobin’s Q is positively correlated with board size, leverage, and board independence, while ROA is positively correlated with board size and firm size and negatively with leverage. The highest correlation among the explanatory variables, 0.3613 between board size and firm size, is far below the level of 0.7 at which multicollinearity usually becomes a concern. Table 5 does not include the critical mass indicators. They are mutually exclusive categories defined from PWOB, so their correlations with PWOB reflect this construction. Each regression includes either PWOB (Table 6) or one set of category indicators with all-male boards as the reference group (Table 7, Table 8 and Table 9), never both, so these correlations do not affect the estimates.
Table 5. Correlation matrix.

4.3. Female Board Representation and Firm Performance

Table 6 reports the estimates of Equation (1) with firm and year fixed effects for the non-financial firms (columns 1 and 2) and for all firms (columns 3 and 4). The coefficient on PWOB is negative in all four columns but small, and it is not significant at the 5% level in any of them. Only the ROA coefficient for all firms is significant at the 10% level. The confidence intervals show that the data rule out large effects. For the non-financial firms, an increase in female representation of ten percentage points is associated with a change in ROA of −0.27 percentage points, with a 95% confidence interval from −0.66 to +0.11 percentage points, compared with a mean ROA of 6.47%. The corresponding change in Tobin’s Q is −0.7%, with a confidence interval from −3.2% to +1.8%. Hypothesis 1 is therefore not supported.
Among the control variables, firm size is negatively related to Tobin’s Q, and leverage is strongly negatively related to ROA, as interest costs reduce net income. Board size and board independence are not significant, except for a negative coefficient on board size in the ROA model for all firms at the 10% level. Year fixed effects raise the within-firm R2 for Tobin’s Q from about 0.11 in a model without them to 0.30, which shows how much of the change in firm valuation over time is common to all firms. Adding the financial firms leaves the results essentially unchanged.
Table 6. Female board representation and firm performance.

4.4. Critical Mass Measured by the Proportion of Female Directors

Table 7 replaces PWOB with the Kanter categories. No category differs significantly from all-male boards on either performance measure. Tobin’s Q coefficients are close to zero, whereas the ROA coefficients are negative and grow in absolute value from skewed (−0.03) to tilted (−0.66) and balanced boards (−1.11), but none of them is significant. Wald tests do not reject the equality of skewed and tilted boards (p = 0.198) or of tilted and balanced boards (p = 0.402) in the main sample, and the three indicators are jointly insignificant (p = 0.990 for Tobin’s Q and 0.484 for ROA). The ordering of the ROA point estimates is consistent with Kanter’s (1977) view that larger minorities can shape group outcomes more than tokens, but the data do not allow us to distinguish it from chance.
Table 7. Critical mass based on Kanter’s categories.
Table 8 uses the 30% cut-off of Strydom et al. (2017), the threshold most often proposed in the literature (Section 2.2). Neither boards with fewer than 30% women nor boards with at least 30% women differ significantly from all-male boards, and the two categories do not differ significantly from each other (p = 0.230 for Tobin’s Q and 0.264 for ROA). Two continuous specifications lead to the same result. Neither a quadratic term in PWOB nor a restricted cubic spline with knots at 0%, 11.1%, 25%, and 50% women, the 5th, 35th, 65th, and 95th percentiles, indicates a nonlinear relationship in either sample (p ≥ 0.35 for the quadratic term and p ≥ 0.67 for the spline terms). Hypothesis 2 is therefore not supported: The data show no change in the association at the thresholds proposed by critical mass theory.
Table 8. Critical mass based on a 30% threshold.

4.5. Critical Mass Measured by the Number of Female Directors

Proportions may misstate the size of the female group when board sizes differ, so Table 9 repeats the analysis with the number of women on the board, following Liu et al. (2014), who find that three or more female directors improve the performance of Chinese firms. None of the four indicators differs significantly from all-male boards. As with the Kanter categories, the ROA coefficients become more negative with the number of women, from −0.14 for one woman to −0.91 for four or more women in the main sample. Wald tests, however, reject neither the equality of two and three women (p = 0.499) nor that of three and four or more women (p = 0.603), and the four indicators are jointly insignificant (p = 0.739 for Tobin’s Q and 0.912 for ROA). In both samples, none of the Wald tests for adjacent categories in Table 7, Table 8 and Table 9 is significant at the 10% level. On a board of average size (9.41 members), 30% and 40% correspond to about three and four directors, so the count-based and the proportional classifications lead to the same conclusion.
Table 9. Critical mass based on the number of female directors.

4.6. Time Effects, Robustness, and Endogeneity

Table 10 shows how the results depend on the treatment of time effects. Column 1 reports estimates with firm fixed effects only. In this specification, PWOB is negatively associated with both performance measures, although with Tobin’s Q only at the 10% level. Boards with at least 20% women, at least 30% women, or three or more women have significantly lower ROA than all-male boards, and boards with at least 30% women or four or more women also have a significantly lower Tobin’s Q. These associations reflect common trends. Over the sample period, the average share of female directors rose from 19.0% in 2012 to 21.2% in 2021, while average ROA fell from 9.5% in 2012 to 4.4% in 2020 and the average logarithm of Tobin’s Q from 0.22 in 2012 to −0.04 in 2019. Without time effects, the models attribute part of this decline, which affected Thai listed firms in general, to the rising share of women. Adding year fixed effects (column 2) shrinks the coefficients by about half or more, and none remains significant at the 5% level. A linear time trend instead of year fixed effects has the same effect (for example, −0.0266 with p = 0.178 for PWOB in the ROA model).
Table 10. Time effects and robustness.
Columns 3 to 5 check the estimates with year fixed effects. Industry-by-year fixed effects (column 3), which allow economic shocks to differ across the seven SET industry groups, give nearly the same estimates as year fixed effects (column 2). When the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 are excluded (column 4), the ROA coefficients are close to zero and the Tobin’s Q coefficients remain insignificant, so the negative ROA estimates in Table 6, Table 7, Table 8 and Table 9 come from these two years. Column 5 excludes the 598 firm-years with fewer than five directors or no independent directors (Section 3.1). The Tobin’s Q estimates remain insignificant, and the ROA estimates become somewhat more negative, with PWOB and balanced boards significant at the 10% level. In the sample of all firms, the same exclusion makes the ROA coefficients on PWOB (−0.0430, p = 0.032) and on balanced boards (−1.80, p = 0.040) significant at the 5% level, whereas with industry-by-year effects only the PWOB coefficient in the ROA model is significant, at the 10% level, and without the pandemic years the ROA coefficients are again close to zero. Excluding the 56 listed funds instead (Section 3.1) changes the estimates in nearly the same way: The ROA coefficients on PWOB are −0.0390 (p = 0.082) among non-financial firms and −0.0426 (p = 0.036) among all firms, and the Tobin’s Q estimates remain insignificant (not tabulated). Estimates with ROE instead of ROA show the same pattern (Appendix A, Table A3): The coefficients are negative, none of the board categories differs significantly from all-male boards, and the coefficient on PWOB is significant only at the 10% level in the sample of all firms (p = 0.082). Overall, the evidence for a negative association with ROA and ROE is weak and depends on the sample, and there is no evidence of an association with Tobin’s Q.
Firm and year fixed effects remove stable firm characteristics and common shocks but not firm-specific time-varying factors that may affect both board composition and performance, and causality may also run from performance to the board. Poor performance may make a firm more willing to appoint women, a pattern known as the glass cliff (Ryan & Haslam, 2005), and performance may also affect whether women seek or accept a directorship (Liu et al., 2014). Peer-based instruments, such as the share of female directors in other firms of the same region or industry, are a common response to these concerns. They may, however, be correlated with regional economic conditions, sectoral profitability, and shared business networks that affect performance directly, and they address only the continuous measure of female representation, not the critical mass categories. We therefore do not use instrumental variables and interpret all estimates in this study as conditional associations rather than causal effects.

5. Discussion

Among Thai non-financial firms, female board representation is not associated with Tobin’s Q, and its association with ROA is weak, so neither hypothesis is supported. The ROA association is significant only in some specifications and disappears when the pandemic years are excluded. Boards in the categories that critical mass theory associates with a greater influence of women, with at least 20%, 30%, or 40% women or with three or more women, do not perform differently from all-male boards or from boards with fewer women. The negative associations that appear in models with firm fixed effects alone are explained by common time trends. All estimates are conditional associations, and the explanations discussed below are hypotheses consistent with them rather than tested mechanisms.
These results are closest to studies that report no effect of female directors, such as Rose (2007) for Denmark, Marinova et al. (2016) for the Netherlands and Denmark, and Firew (2024) for Malaysia, and to the absence of a valuation effect of the Norwegian quota reported by Eckbo et al. (2022). Our earlier result that female board representation is unrelated to the ESG scores of Thai firms points in the same direction (Thamaree & Zaby, 2026). The findings differ from studies that report positive effects in India and Singapore (Duppati et al., 2020), Malaysia (Rahman et al., 2023), Vietnam (Pham et al., 2025), and four ASEAN markets (Khunkaew et al., 2023), from critical mass studies that identify performance gains once women hold about 30% of the seats or three seats (Joecks et al., 2013; Jayaraman et al., 2025), and from the positive relationship with Tobin’s Q that Vetchagool (2025) reports for Thai agribusiness and food companies. Darmadi (2011) for Indonesia and K. Wang et al. (2024) for Japan, in turn, document negative associations. Part of these differences may come from samples and methods. Duppati et al. (2020) combine quantile, fixed effects, and system GMM estimation for 2005–2015; Jayaraman et al. (2025) apply system GMM to 330 Indian firms over 2008–2018; Rahman et al. (2023) study 300 Malaysian firms over 2010–2014; and Vetchagool (2025) examines 45 agribusiness and food companies over 2018–2022. Our results point to the treatment of time effects as a further source of differences. In a period in which female representation rises steadily, models that do not remove common time effects can attribute economy-wide changes in performance to board composition.

5.1. Possible Explanations

Several mechanisms could explain why female representation shows no clear association with performance. The first is that positive and negative effects offset each other. Agency and resource dependence theories expect female directors to strengthen monitoring and to widen the board’s expertise and contacts (Carter et al., 2003; Hillman & Dalziel, 2003; Post & Byron, 2015). The same monitoring can, however, add costs where governance is already adequate (Adams & Ferreira, 2009), and Thai listed firms have operated under increasingly detailed governance guidance since 2012. A more heterogeneous board may also take longer to reach decisions and experience more conflict (Carter et al., 2003; Rose, 2007), particularly when demographic differences divide it into subgroups along a faultline (Lau & Murnighan, 1998). If these effects are of similar size, their net effect on performance is small. Our data do not contain committee assignments, attendance records, or information on board processes, so this explanation remains untested.
The second concerns how much board composition changes within firms. Firm fixed effects identify the association from these changes, which are mostly small. Of the year-to-year changes in the number of female directors, 84% involve a single director, and the within-firm variation in female representation is about half the variation between firms (Section 4.1). Critical mass theory expects women to gain influence as their group grows and as the board’s working practices adapt to it (Kanter, 1977; Konrad et al., 2008), and such adjustments may take longer to affect performance than the year-to-year changes that the models capture. Tokens in skewed groups tend to conform, and even in tilted and balanced groups the influence of women may depend on their roles and tenure, which our data do not record.
The third concerns who the female directors are. In family-controlled firms in emerging Asian markets, women on the board are often members of the controlling family who are appointed to protect the family’s interests rather than for their professional expertise (Darmadi, 2011; Low et al., 2015). Many female directors in Thailand have close family ties and act as family representatives, which can limit their independence (Padungsaksawasdi & Treepongkaruna, 2024). Where a woman from the controlling family joins or replaces other family representatives, the board’s monitoring and decision-making may change little, and female representation would then be unrelated to performance. Duppati et al. (2020) describe a related problem in India, where some large business groups met the quota by appointing wives and daughters of the controlling families. The Thai evidence is not uniform, however. Buachoom et al. (2023) find that female directors can reduce the negative effect of family ownership on firm value. Because our data contain neither family ownership nor the family ties of individual directors, comparing family-controlled and other firms, and family-affiliated and independent female directors, remains an important step for future research.
The fourth explanation concerns the weak negative association with ROA in 2020 and 2021. If women are more often appointed to boards of firms facing difficulties (Ryan & Haslam, 2005), a crisis such as the pandemic could produce a negative association between female representation and profitability that reflects where women were appointed rather than what they did on the board. Firm and year fixed effects do not remove difficulties that affect individual firms during the sample period, so this explanation cannot be ruled out.
A fifth consideration draws on resource dependence theory, in which the value of a director depends on the human and social capital he or she brings to the board (Hillman & Dalziel, 2003). When the demand for female directors rises faster than the pool of women with board experience, newly appointed directors may have less experience than the directors they join, as Ahern and Dittmar (2012) report for Norway after its quota. Thailand has no quota, and female representation on Thai boards rose only gradually after 2012 (Table 4), which may have allowed firms to find experienced candidates. Our data do not include director experience, so this explanation also remains untested.

5.2. Implications

The results support neither the view that more women on boards reduce firm performance nor the view that a critical mass of women improves it. In Thailand, the share of women on boards rose without measurable effects on firm value and with only weak, pandemic-related differences in profitability, and the confidence intervals rule out large effects in either direction. Arguments for board gender diversity in this setting therefore rest on grounds other than short-term financial performance, such as the board’s access to a wider pool of talent and the legitimacy that a diverse board gives the firm (Hillman & Dalziel, 2003). These estimates describe conditional associations in one market and period, and they do not exclude small effects in either direction.
For firms, the practical implication is to treat gender diversity as part of board design: Female directors, like male directors, should be appointed for their expertise and independence and integrated into committee work and decision-making. Regulators can draw a similar conclusion: Targets based on the number or share of women are unlikely to harm performance, but they should not be expected to improve it by themselves. Combining such targets with requirements on director independence and with disclosure of directors’ family and business ties to controlling shareholders would allow investors and researchers to assess whether family appointments play the role suggested in Section 5.1. If Thai policymakers consider moving from soft law to quotas, the Indian experience, where some firms met the quota with family members (Duppati et al., 2020), shows why such safeguards matter. For researchers, the results show that studies of board composition over periods in which female representation trends upward need to control for common time effects.

5.3. Limitations and Future Research

This study has several limitations. First, the estimates are conditional associations. Firm and year fixed effects remove stable firm characteristics and common shocks, but we have no identification strategy for firm-specific time-varying confounders or reverse causality, either for the continuous measure of female representation or for the critical mass categories. Second, the absence of significant associations does not show that there is no effect. The confidence intervals rule out large effects but are compatible with small positive or negative ones. Third, the critical mass categories are taken from the literature, and the threshold is not estimated from the data. Wald tests, a quadratic term, and a restricted cubic spline show neither differences between adjacent categories nor a nonlinear relationship, but a longer panel could detect smaller differences. Fourth, SETSMART reports fewer than five directors or no independent directors for 598 firm-years, which are probably incomplete records. Excluding them, or the listed funds, makes the negative ROA estimates stronger in some specifications (Section 4.6), so the ROA results call for particular caution. Fifth, the sample consists of the firms listed in 2021, so firms that delisted earlier in the period are not included. If delisting is related to both board composition and performance, this survivorship may affect the estimates. Firm-years with missing values are also excluded (Appendix A), and we cannot rule out that this missingness is related to firm characteristics. Sixth, we lack director-level information on family relationships, independence, committee membership, tenure, and expertise, as well as firm-level data on family ownership, so the explanations in Section 5.1 remain untested. Seventh, the sample ends in 2021 for the reasons given in Section 3.1. Since the weak ROA association comes from 2020 and 2021, later years would show whether it reflected the pandemic. Eighth, Tobin’s Q, ROA, and ROE capture financial outcomes only, and boards may also affect risk, innovation, and non-financial outcomes (Y. Wang & Clift, 2009). Finally, directors are classified as men or women; a broader definition of gender diversity may become feasible as legal recognition of non-binary identities spreads (Fiani & Serpe, 2020).

6. Conclusions

This study examined whether female directors are associated with the performance of Thai listed firms and whether the association depends on the size of the female group. In a panel of 584 non-financial firms from 2012 to 2021, models with firm and year fixed effects show no significant association between female board representation and Tobin’s Q. The association with ROA is negative but weak, significant only in some specifications, and absent when the pandemic years 2020 and 2021 are excluded. Boards with a critical mass of women, defined by Kanter’s categories, a 30% threshold, or three or more women, do not perform differently from all-male boards. Models with firm fixed effects alone show significant negative associations, but these reflect the common trends of the period, in which the share of women rose while the performance of Thai listed firms declined. The confidence intervals rule out large effects in either direction. Positive and negative effects of female directors may offset each other, and family-affiliated appointments may change little about how boards work. Testing these explanations requires director-level data on family ties, independence, and experience, and a longer panel would show whether the weak association with ROA outlasts the pandemic.

Author Contributions

Conceptualization, A.T. and S.Z.; methodology, A.T. and S.Z.; software, A.T. and S.Z.; validation, A.T. and S.Z.; formal analysis, A.T. and S.Z.; writing—original draft preparation, A.T. and S.Z.; writing—review and editing, S.Z.; visualization, A.T. and S.Z.; supervision, S.Z.; project administration, S.Z. All authors have read and agreed to the published version of the manuscript.

Funding

This research received no external funding.

Institutional Review Board Statement

Not applicable.

Data Availability Statement

The accounting and market data used in this study were obtained from the Stock Exchange of Thailand Market Analysis and Reporting Tool (SETSMART) under an institutional license and cannot be shared publicly. Board composition data were collected by hand from publicly available annual reports and company websites.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Appendix A

Table A1. Sample selection and estimation samples.
Table A2. Year-to-year transitions between Kanter categories.
Table A3. Return on equity as an alternative performance measure.

References

  1. Adams, R. B., & Ferreira, D. (2009). Women in the boardroom and their impact on governance and performance. Journal of Financial Economics, 94(2), 291–309. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  2. Ahern, K. R., & Dittmar, A. K. (2012). The changing of the boards: The impact on firm valuation of mandated female board representation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 127(1), 137–197. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  3. Bennouri, M., Chtioui, T., Nagati, H., & Nekhili, M. (2018). Female board directorship and firm performance: What really matters? Journal of Banking & Finance, 88, 267–291. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  4. Buachoom, W. W., & Amornkitvikai, Y. (2026). The moderating effects of board independence and the separation of chairman–chief executive officer duality roles on a firm’s value: Evidence from the Thai listed firms. Global Business Review, 27(3), 683–700. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  5. Buachoom, W. W., Amornkitvikai, Y., Al Farooque, O., & Sun, L. (2023). Female ownership and female directors’ moderating role as corporate governance monitoring mechanisms in increasing the value of Thai family-owned firms. Gender in Management, 38(8), 997–1013. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  6. Carter, D. A., D’Souza, F., Simkins, B. J., & Simpson, W. G. (2010). The gender and ethnic diversity of US boards and board committees and firm financial performance. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 18(5), 396–414. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  7. Carter, D. A., Simkins, B. J., & Simpson, W. G. (2003). Corporate governance, board diversity, and firm value. Financial Review, 38(1), 33–53. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  8. Darmadi, S. (2011). Board diversity and firm performance: The Indonesian evidence. Corporate Ownership and Control, 8(2), 450–466. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  9. De Acutis, C., Weber, A., & Wurm, E. (2024). The effects of board gender quotas: A meta-analysis. Labour Economics, 91, 102634. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  10. Duppati, G., Rao, N. V., Matlani, N., Scrimgeour, F., & Patnaik, D. (2020). Gender diversity and firm performance: Evidence from India and Singapore. Applied Economics, 52(14), 1553–1565. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  11. Eckbo, B. E., Nygaard, K., & Thorburn, K. S. (2022). Valuation effects of Norway’s board gender-quota law revisited. Management Science, 68(6), 4112–4134. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  12. Eisenhardt, K. M. (1989). Agency theory: An assessment and review. Academy of Management Review, 14(1), 57–74. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  13. Erhardt, N. L., Werbel, J. D., & Shrader, C. B. (2003). Board of director diversity and firm financial performance. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 11(2), 102–111. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  14. Fiani, C. N., & Serpe, C. R. (2020). Non-binary identity and the double-edged sword of globalization. In Trans lives in a globalizing world (pp. 50–65). Routledge. [Google Scholar]
  15. Firew, B. G. (2024). Gender diversity and firm performance: Evidence from Malaysia boardrooms. Cogent Economics & Finance, 12(1), 2381135. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  16. Green, C. P., & Homroy, S. (2018). Female directors, board committees and firm performance. European Economic Review, 102, 19–38. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  17. Hillman, A. J., & Dalziel, T. (2003). Boards of directors and firm performance: Integrating agency and resource dependence perspectives. Academy of Management Review, 28(3), 383–396. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  18. Jayaraman, J., Smita, R., & Nilakantan, N. (2025). The impact of board gender diversity on firm performance: Does critical mass matter? Journal of Applied Accounting Research, 26(1), 249–277. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  19. Joecks, J., Pull, K., & Vetter, K. (2013). Gender diversity in the boardroom and firm performance: What exactly constitutes a “critical mass”? Journal of Business Ethics, 118(1), 61–72. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  20. Kanter, R. M. (1977). Some effects of proportions on group life: Skewed sex ratios and responses to token women. American Journal of Sociology, 82(5), 965–990. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit] [PubMed]
  21. Kaur, R., & Singh, K. (2026). Beyond tipping points: Critical mass theory through the lens of board gender diversity. International Journal of Organizational Analysis, 34(6), 2046–2065. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  22. Khunkaew, R., Wichianrak, J., & Suttipun, M. (2023). Sustainability reporting, gender diversity, firm value and corporate performance in ASEAN region. Cogent Business & Management, 10(1), 2200608. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  23. Konrad, A. M., Kramer, V., & Erkut, S. (2008). Critical mass: The impact of three or more women on corporate boards. Organizational Dynamics, 37(2), 145–164. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  24. Lafuente, E., & Vaillant, Y. (2019). Balance rather than critical mass or tokenism: Gender diversity, leadership and performance in financial firms. International Journal of Manpower, 40(5), 894–916. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  25. Lau, D. C., & Murnighan, J. K. (1998). Demographic diversity and faultlines: The compositional dynamics of organizational groups. Academy of Management Review, 23(2), 325–340. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  26. Liu, Y., Wei, Z., & Xie, F. (2014). Do women directors improve firm performance in China? Journal of Corporate Finance, 28, 169–184. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  27. Low, D. C. M., Roberts, H., & Whiting, R. H. (2015). Board gender diversity and firm performance: Empirical evidence from Hong Kong, South Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. Pacific-Basin Finance Journal, 35, 381–401. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  28. Lückerath-Rovers, M. (2013). Women on boards and firm performance. Journal of Management & Governance, 17(2), 491–509. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  29. Marinova, J., Plantenga, J., & Remery, C. (2016). Gender diversity and firm performance: Evidence from Dutch and Danish boardrooms. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 27(15), 1777–1790. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  30. MSCI ESG Research. (2020). Women on boards 2020 progress report. Available online: https://static1.squarespace.com/static/5b065a933917ee4f2a6f9d16/t/60516d575ffa1a428ad30b4d/1615949149786/MSCI+Women-on-Boards-2020-Progress-Report.pdf (accessed on 12 October 2026).
  31. Nguyen, T. H. H., Ntim, C. G., & Malagila, J. K. (2020). Women on corporate boards and corporate financial and non-financial performance: A systematic literature review and future research agenda. International Review of Financial Analysis, 71, 101554. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  32. Padungsaksawasdi, C., & Treepongkaruna, S. (2024). Corporate social responsibility, board characteristics, and family business in Thailand. Corporate Social Responsibility and Environmental Management, 31(2), 1340–1353. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  33. Panda, B., & Leepsa, N. M. (2017). Agency theory: Review of theory and evidence on problems and perspectives. Indian Journal of Corporate Governance, 10(1), 74–95. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  34. Pham, T.-M., Rizov, M., & Vo, X. V. (2025). Board gender diversity and firm performance in an emerging economy: The role of women directors’ attributes. International Journal of Finance & Economics, 30(4), 4063–4081. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  35. Post, C., & Byron, K. (2015). Women on boards and firm financial performance: A meta-analysis. Academy of Management Journal, 58(5), 1546–1571. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  36. PwC. (2024). Success and succession in the AI era: PwC’s Global NextGen Survey 2024, Thailand report. Available online: https://www.pwc.com/th/en/thailand/assets/family-business/2024/asset/pdf/pwc-global-nextgen-survey-2024-thailand-report-en-version.pdf (accessed on 12 October 2026).
  37. Rahman, H. U., Zahid, M., & Al-Faryan, M. A. S. (2023). Boardroom gender diversity and firm performance: From the lens of voluntary regulations, “tokenism” and “critical mass”. Total Quality Management & Business Excellence, 34(3–4), 345–363. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  38. Rose, C. (2007). Does female board representation influence firm performance? The Danish evidence. Corporate Governance: An International Review, 15(2), 404–413. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  39. Ryan, M. K., & Haslam, S. A. (2005). The glass cliff: Evidence that women are over-represented in precarious leadership positions. British Journal of Management, 16(2), 81–90. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  40. Schwartz-Ziv, M. (2017). Gender and board activeness: The role of a critical mass. Journal of Financial and Quantitative Analysis, 52(2), 751–780. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  41. Securities and Exchange Commission. (2017). Corporate governance code for listed companies 2017. Securities and Exchange Commission. [Google Scholar]
  42. Short, J. C., Ketchen, D. J., Jr., Palmer, T. B., & Hult, G. T. M. (2007). Firm, strategic group, and industry influences on performance. Strategic Management Journal, 28(2), 147–167. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  43. Singh, S., Tabassum, N., Darwish, T. K., & Batsakis, G. (2018). Corporate governance and Tobin’s Q as a measure of organizational performance. British Journal of Management, 29(1), 171–190. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  44. Stock Exchange of Thailand. (2012). The principles of good corporate governance for listed companies 2012. Stock Exchange of Thailand. [Google Scholar]
  45. Stock Exchange of Thailand. (2023). Thai stock market: Growth path for family business. Available online: https://media.set.or.th/set/Documents/2023/Oct/Thai-stock-market-family-business-funding-source.pdf (accessed on 12 October 2026).
  46. Strydom, M., Au Yong, H. H., & Rankin, M. (2017). A few good (wo)men? Gender diversity on Australian boards. Australian Journal of Management, 42(3), 404–427. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  47. Thamaree, A., & Zaby, S. (2026). Gender-diverse boards and corporate social responsibility in the Thai context. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 19(8), 573. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  48. Torchia, M., Calabrò, A., & Huse, M. (2011). Women directors on corporate boards: From tokenism to critical mass. Journal of Business Ethics, 102(2), 299–317. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  49. Vetchagool, W. (2025). Board age diversity and firm performance: Empirical evidence from Thailand. Review of Integrative Business and Economics Research, 14(2), 450–467. [Google Scholar]
  50. Wang, K., Ma, J., Xue, C., & Zhang, J. (2024). Board gender diversity and firm performance: Recent evidence from Japan. Journal of Risk and Financial Management, 17(1), 20. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  51. Wang, Y., & Clift, B. (2009). Is there a “business case” for board diversity? Pacific Accounting Review, 21(2), 88–103. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  52. Wooldridge, J. M. (2016). Introductory econometrics: A modern approach (6th ed.). Cengage Learning. [Google Scholar]
  53. Yang, W., Yang, J., & Gao, Z. (2019). Do female board directors promote corporate social responsibility? An empirical study based on the critical mass theory. Emerging Markets Finance and Trade, 55(15), 3452–3471. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  54. Young, M. N., Peng, M. W., Ahlstrom, D., Bruton, G. D., & Jiang, Y. (2008). Corporate governance in emerging economies: A review of the principal–principal perspective. Journal of Management Studies, 45(1), 196–220. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
  55. Zaichkowsky, J. L. (2014). Women in the board room: One can make a difference. International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 9(1), 91–113. [Google Scholar] [CrossRef] [Scilit]
Disclaimer/Publisher’s Note: The statements, opinions and data contained in all publications are solely those of the individual author(s) and contributor(s) and not of MDPI and/or the editor(s). MDPI and/or the editor(s) disclaim responsibility for any injury to people or property resulting from any ideas, methods, instructions or products referred to in the content.

Article Metrics

Citations

Article Access Statistics

Journal Statistics
Multiple requests from the same IP address are counted as one view.
Geopolitical Shocks in a Frontier Market: Panic and Recovery in the Thai–Cambodian Border Conflict on the CSX
Previous
Dynamic Asset Allocation with Direct Policy Optimization: Evidence from a US Public-Market Multi-Asset Universe
Next