**3. Research methodology**

#### **3.1 Sample and data**

For the purposes of this study, we used a sample of French companies belonging to the SBF 120 index over the period 2011–2018. The SBF 120 index includes the 120 most important companies in terms of market capitalization and trading volumes on the Euronext Paris market. This 10-year period analysis allowed us to constitute a large panel of observations enriching the results and the validity of the econometric tests. Financial institutions were excluded from the sample due to differences in their specific governance and accounting systems. The final panel consisted of 64 companies. Thus, the study covers 576 firm-year observations. Data about women's presence on board were hand-collected from the reference documents and annual reports available on the firms' websites. Financial and accounting data were obtained from the ThomsonOne database.

**Table 1** presents the firm distribution by industry within the sample.

#### **3.2 Variables description**

In financial theory, two components are used to measure the risk of the company. On the one hand, market risk generally resulting from factors exogenous to the company such as fluctuations in supply and demand, interest rates, and input

