Does Female Board Presence Moderate on the Relationship between Board Characteristic and Capital Structure? Evidence from Nigeria Listed Firms

The study examines how female board presence moderates the relationship between corporate governance and capital structure of non-finance companies listed in Nigeria. The study covers a period of ten years from 2012 to 2021 using data obtained from Machame ratios database. A sample size of sixty non-finance listed firms were used. Using Stata version 14, he OLS pooled regression, diagnostic and robustness tests are carried out. result shows that larger board size of big and small non-finance firms in Nigeria tend to reduce their capital structure. Similarly, independence of the board of directors of big non-finance firms in Nigeria tend to reduce their capital structure. However, the board independence of smaller non-finance firms tends to increase their debt to asset ratio insignificantly. Again, the outcome shows that having a female director on a large board significantly decreases the level of leverage of the smaller firms in the sample. The study also shows that having a female director on an independent board significantly increases the debt-to-asset ratio of the bigger firms in the sample. The study recommends at least one female director on a large board, increase in firms share capital and a review of the policies on female board members.