Female Board Representation and Firms Financial Performance: Evidence from Omani Non-Financial Firms.

In emerging countries like Oman, the memberships of board of directors for most companies are dominated by males. The number of females sit as board of directors are relatively low since there was no clear regulation to recruit them as board members or even serve at supervisory levels. Hence, this study aims to empirically investigate the effect of females' board of directors on firm performance in Oman, a member of the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries. The Return on Asset (ROA) and Tobin's Q are used as proxies to measure firm's performance for 63 nonfinancial firms registered on the Muscat Security Market (MSM) for the periods between 2016 and 2019. This study applied canonical analysis techniques in order to assess and answer the research hypotheses. The findings indicates that the hypotheses are rejected because ROA and Tobin's Q are unrelated to the proportion of females as the board of directors, regardless of whether the firm size or firm age are being controlled. Thus, the results implied that more opportunities, empowerment and skills should be exposed or given to females to sit on the board and hence the number will increase accordingly. Future studies could also look at financial organizations as well in order to evaluate how female board representation affects financial success of the firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]