A study by the Australian National University has found that the gender of directors appointed to company boards had no impact on the financial performance of those businesses.

The authors of the report, Nicholas Bayly, Robert Breunig and Chris Wokker from ANU’s Crawford School of Public Policy, analysed the relationship between female directors and the financial and share price performance of 1,721 directors at 2,483 firms between 2000 and 2016.