Does board gender diversity engage with Corporate Social Responsibility reporting?

Abstract

In recent years, the incorporation of women into the labor market has increased, but there are still notable gender differences in the composition of the governing bodies. On the other hand, in the business world the concept of CSR (corporate social responsibility) is becoming increasingly relevant, as the actions of companies have repercussions on society. Recently it has been written about whether having a gender-sensitive board of directors favors voluntary disclosure by companies of CSR reports. The purpose of this paper is to analyze whether gender diversity in the board of directors can be positively associated with the disclosure of information on corporate social responsibility. For this, we carry out the analysis on an international sample of 12,726 companies belonging to different sectors, of which we know about which aspects related to CSR they report and also, among other data, the composition of its board of directors. The results of this study reveal that having a high proportion of female directors on the board of directors positively affects the amount of CSR information presented by the company.