Paper Title
“Does Gender Diversity Matters? An Empirical Examination of Indian and Malaysian Firms”

Abstract
The Study examines the connection link between gender diversity on boards and the financial success of listed companies in India and Malaysia. The present study adds value to the existing literature by studying the relationship between corporate governance and corporate finance using sample data from the Indian and Malaysian Stock Exchanges. 10 years of financial data from 2011-2021 of the selected companies were taken for the data analysis by excluding 2020 as considering it as an abnormal year due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The study employed GMM and IV Regression for data analysis and used the Percentage of women on board and the Blau index value of board gender diversity as proxy variables for measuring Board gender diversity. The financial performance of the selected firms has been analyzed by taking ROA as the proxy measure. Our study result showed a positive impact of Women's representation on board towards financial performance for the selected firms under study in both India and Malaysia. Our study results further explored that Board Gender Diversity will improve Firms Corporate Governance through enhanced board independence and transparency. Overall, the study result concludes that better board independence, transparency and reduced agency issues will result in improved financial performance. Keywords - Gender diversity, financial performance, Generalised Method of Moments, Instrumental Variable regression, ROA