There is a global trend by policy makers and regulators to increase women on corporate boards. Some European countries have sought to implement gender quotas, others use networking and mentoring programs to quicken women's rise to the top. For example, there is currently mandatory gender quota of 40% in Norway and Spain, 50% in France and penalties will be imposed for non-compliance. There is no equivalent legislative requirement in Australia but it shows a rapid voluntary increase in female directors on Australian corporate boards. According to a recent survey by the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD), the percentage of female directorship on the boards of Top 200 firms listed on the Australian Securities Exchange (ASX) has increased substantially over time, from 8.3% in 2009 to 28.2% in 2017 and 32.9% as at 28 February 2021. 1 However, there are two companies in the ASX200 that do not have any female directors on the board of directors.2 The AICD, therefore, wants to investigate the benefits of having gender-diversity boards so that it can make recommendations to Australian regulatory bodies. You, as an analyst of market research division of the AICD, need to report to the AICD board of directors to see whether female participation in company boards is perceived to be valuable. You choose two measures of company profitability to investigate. The first one is return on asset (ROA). The ROA figure gives investors an idea of how effectively the company is converting the money it has to invest into net income. The higher the ROA number, the better the firm performance, because the company is earning more money on their investment. The second measure of profitability is the annual company stock market return which indicates how well the company stock performs in a given year. You start with the top 500 companies listed on the ASX as at the end of financial year 2020 (30 June 2020). Companies in the ASX are grouped according to their industry sectors. There are 11 industry sectors within the Australian market. They are ConsumerDiscretionary, Consumer Staples, Energy, Financials, Health Care, Industrials, Information Technology, Materials, Real Estate, Communication Services, and Utilities. You choose to concentrate on three following industry groups, namely Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services and Real Estate. Each firm can be classified against one industry sector. You collected the required data for 110 companies in each of these three industry sectors. The board of directors with women representation is referred as a gender-diversity board. Oppositely, the board of directors with no women representation is referred as a non-gender diversity board. Data are stored in the Excel file (ACCT5008_BR_2021_s1_datafile.xlxs) in the following ways:

Column A: Firm ID

To describe the ID of each firm in the sample, ranging from Firm 1 to Firm 330

Column B: ROA Return on assets (ROA) for each firm in the financial year 2020, expressed in percentage. ROA is calculated as

net income divided by total assets. x 100

Net Income for 2020 Total Assets in 2020

Column D: Total assets

The firm total assets reported in their annual reports as at 30 June 2020, expressed in dollars of millions

Column E: Industry group

There are 3 industry groups in the sample. They are Consumer Discretionary, Communication Services and Real Estate.

o 1 = if a company belongs to the Consumer Discretionary industry sector

o 2 = if a company belongs to the Communication Services industry sector

o 3 = if a company belongs to the Real Estate industry sector

Column F: Gender-diversity board

Indicate if the company board of directors has any female director.

o 1 = there is at least one female director on the board (gender-diversity board)

o 0 = there is no female representation on the board (non-gender diversity board

Column G: The proportion of female directors on the board of directors

The proportion of female directors on the board of a firm, calculated as the number of female directors on the board divided by the total number of board directors.

1. Is the proportion of female directors on the board in the Real Estate industry sector higher than that in the Consumer Discretionary industry sector? What is the p-value of the test?

2. Is the representation of female directors on the board dependent on industry sectors