Share Buybacks and Gender Diversity

We find that board gender diversity increases the likelihood that firms announce a buyback but long-term excess returns are significantly smaller when there are females on the board. Hence, it appears that boards with women are less able to time the market by repurchasing undervalued stock. Our results are consistent with past research that finds that male executives make superior returns than females from insider trading. However, we find that timing ability increases significantly when women have better access to information networks, i.e. when they are CEOs or when they sit on other boards.