Gender and risk - do public listing and private ownership bank matter?

PurposeThis study aims to empirically test the influence of board member gender on insolvency risk in a two-tier system.Design/methodology/approachThis study considers 91 banks operating in Indonesia from 2009 to 2021. It uses a two-step system generalized moment method to analyze the data.FindingsThis study reports that appointing women to the board of commissioners and as directors reduces the insolvency risk. Women's role in reducing risk is more effective in listed and private-owned banks (POB) than in others.Practical implicationsThe presence of women in boardrooms is crucial for improving financial performance and reducing financial distress in banks, particularly listed and POB. The findings of this study are expected to provide insights into board selection and appointment.Originality/valueThe extant literature on the impact of appointing women to boards on bank risk lacks a consensus because of differences in proxies in measuring gender diversity (GD). This paper conducts scenarios using four GD proxies, namely, dummy, percentage of women, Blau index and Shannon index, and two insolvency risk proxies.