이사회 여성이사가 기업지배구조 성과에 미치는 영향: 사외이사의 조절효과

This study investigates the impact of female directors on corporate governance performance and examines whether the proportion of outside directors moderates this relationship. Utilizing a panel dataset comprising 6,088 firm-year observations from 926 Korean firms evaluated by the Korea Institute of Corporate Governance and Sustainability(KCGS) between 2013 and 2020, we employ a fixed effects panel regression analysis. Our main findings are as follows. First, the number of female directors has a significant positive effect on corporate governance performance. The result suggests that female directors contribute to reducing information asymmetry between shareholders and managers, enhancing the transparency of financial reporting, and monitoring executive compensation, thereby lowering agency costs. Second, the positive effect of female directors is stronger in firms with a higher proportion of outside directors, indicating that the complementary role of board independence in strengthening governance mechanisms. Robustness checks using the proportion of female directors as an alternative independent variable, as well as one-year lagged models, yield consistent results. These findings underscore the importance of promoting gender diversity and board independence to enhance the quality of corporate governance. This study extends prior research by providing empirical evidence from Korea, complementing existing literature that has largely focused on countries with higher levels of gender equality.