The impact of executive board gender diversity, R&D investment, marketing expenses on company performance in the healthcare industry

There has been an increasing devotion to the gender balance on executive boards in China. There has been an assumption that increasing the proportion of women in the highest jobs will improve company performance and corporate governance. This research paper tests this assumption by studying a sample of 305 publicly listed healthcare companies in China in the period 2016–2019. We find that the choice of gender for board chair and CEO has a more impact on company performance than merely increasing the proportion of women on boards. Assessing the impact on company performance of different gender composition of board chairs and CEOs, we use an innovative approach to measure the relationship, using a proxy measurement in R&D, sales, and marketing expenses.