According to psychological theories, managers' behavior is influenced by some individual characteristics, one of the most important of which is their gender. So that the results of recent research show that the presence of female managers in the composition of the company's board of directors, due to their sensitivity to ethical issues in the financial reporting process, leads to an improvement in the transparency of the financial statements and, as a result, an increase in the liquidity of the company's shares.
The main purpose of this research is the gender of board members, financing decisions and free cash flow. In order to test the hypotheses, specific regression analysis was used for combined data. In order to achieve the aforementioned goals, 120 companies related to the member companies of Tehran Bahadur Stock Exchange were investigated from 2016 to 2014. Therefore, it can be concluded that:
- The presence of women in the board of directors does not have a negative effect on the level of free cash flow.
- The presence of women on the board of directors through high debt financing does not have a negative effect on the level of free cash flow.
- The presence of women in the board of directors does not have a negative effect on the level of free cash flow through the payment of high dividends.
Also, among other control variables studied, company size, return on assets, financial leverage and non-commissioned members of the board of directors have a significant relationship with free cash flow.