Diversity and performance impact in senior management of publicly traded companies

Increasing the presence of women in business life is very important for the development of companies. In particular, the corporate governance structure that is diversified in order to bring together multi-faceted views in decision-making mechanisms is an indispensable requirement. The discovery of the positive effects of women on firm performance will affect the change in male dominant understanding since the past and will result in more equitable management design. In order to contribute to this change, the impact of women's representation on the company's financial performance in senior management and Board of Directors was investigated. In this study, periodical and non-periodical Consumer Goods and services sectors in Turkey, Spain, Slovenia, Italy, Greece, France, Cyprus, Croatia and Bosnia, which are Euromed countries, were discussed and data from 843 companies operating in these sectors were collected. This data was obtained from the Reuters website between October 2016 – February 2017. As a result of descriptive statistical analyses, it was observed that companies were only a single woman in the top management of the company in close to half. More striking, there are no female members in the Board of Directors at a rate of about 76%. As a result of regresion analyses, the most striking effect of the senior female executives and the female Board of Directors was on the dividend yield. According to the results of analyses that the higher the number of seats allocated to women in the senior management and the Board of Directors, the higher the dividend yield. The numbers of female executive in senior management and members of female Board of Directors rate also have a positive effect on the dividend yield when firm size variables included into the models. The studies in the literature mainly focused on American companies. It is observed that a single country is dealt with in large numbers in studies other than American companies. This study takes its originality from the selection of sample companies within the Member States of the Euromed partnership. In an active formation at an international level, such as euromed, gender diversity is an important study in terms of showing what has contributed to economic life.