This research seeks to deepen our understanding of the influence of gender diversity in leadership positions in Colombian family firms. Previous research on female leaders has been focused on showing their hidden influence on making-decisions processes and their challenges in securing appointments to high level positions. In this study I bring together social identity theory, resource dependence theory, stewardship theory and research on family firms to demonstrate that the appointment of female executives in family firms is related to the firm's ownership structure and its idiosyncratic characteristics. Likewise, this theoretical background allows me hypothesize about family firms' governance structure and its links to diversity in terms of gender. Additionally, resource dependence theory provides reasons to expect that some combinations of gender diversity in the different mechanisms of governance of family firms, such as legal representative and boards or directors, are related with financial measures as well as nonĀ-financial ones. In order to test the hypotheses, I use a sample of Colombian family firms which, in 2008 reported to the Superintendent of Societies, among other kinds of information, their financial accounts on an annual basis. These firms also responded to a survey on corporate social responsibility, with useful information for my research. I construct three different samples from this data base; each one is used in different models, which in turn are linked to different hypotheses. I highlight two contributions of this research. First, it shows that family firms can take advantage of gender diversity in ways that have not yet been studied. Second, I demonstrate that when family owners decide to benefit from the diversity brought by a female family member, the family-controlled firm (FCF) seeks specific outcomes that are linked to the characteristics of female executives that the literature has traditionally supported.