ORIGINAL PAPER Women on boards and bank efficiency in ASEAN-5: the moderating role of the independent directors Zulkufly Ramly 1 • Sok-Gee Chan 2 • Mohd Zulkhairi Mustapha 3 • Noor Sharoja Sapiei 3 Received: 9 March 2015 / Accepted: 11 November 2015 Ó Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg 2015 Abstract Corporate governance codes around the world promote women’s pres- ence in corporate board. The extant literature suggests women directors contribute to improve monitoring and advisory role of the board. This study aims to examine the role of independent women directors in improving banks’ efficiency. Using 102 commercial banks from ASEAN-5 countries for a period of 1999–2012, we run generalized method of moments models to test the relationship between the vari- ables. Our results show that banks with independent women directors on board contribute significantly to the bank’s efficiency level. Contrary to the literature, we found that the appointment of women directors or independent directors alone does not significantly enhance banks’ efficiency. The result suggests that women direc- tors are more effective on boards if they are also appointed as independent directors. This finding implies that a combination of corporate governance mechanism is more powerful than relying on a single element of corporate governance. & Noor Sharoja Sapiei noorsharoja@um.edu.my Zulkufly Ramly zul_ramly@iium.edu.my Sok-Gee Chan sokgee@um.edu.my Mohd Zulkhairi Mustapha zulkhairi@um.edu.my 1 Department of Finance, Kulliyah of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, Gombak Campus, Jalan Gombak, 53100 Kuala Lumpur, Selangor, Malaysia 2 Department of Finance and Banking, Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 3 Department of Accounting, Faculty of Business and Accountancy, University of Malaya, 50603 Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia 123 Rev Manag Sci DOI 10.1007/s11846-015-0186-4