Gender Diversity and Technical Efficiency: The Case of Commercial Banks in Africa

International audience This paper investigates the effect of board gender diversity on bank efficiency measured by Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA). Using a panel dataset of banks across 28 African countries over the period 2016–2019, our empirical findings show that the benefits of gender diversity depend on bank size. Specifically, our results reveal that the presence of women on bank boards does not significantly influence efficiency. However, more balanced gender representation is associated with higher efficiency, but only among smaller banks. This suggests that gender diversity contributes to improved governance and decision-making particularly in less complex organizational settings. This study contributes to the corporate governance literature by providing novel evidence from the African banking sector, highlighting that gender diversity is more effective when it reflects a balanced board composition rather than simply ensuring female representation.