Gender diversity on corporate boards: international evidence on commitment to United Nations Sustainable Development Goals

Abstract

PurposeCountries globally have implemented policies or regulations promoting greater gender diversity in boardrooms. We investigate whether gender diversity on corporate boards leads to higher Sustainable Development Goals (SDG) commitment through these disclosures.Design/methodology/approachUsing 16,659 firm-year observations across 42 countries for the years 2019 and 2020, we use disclosure data from the Refinitiv database to measure the sample firms’ stated commitment to sustainable development.FindingsOur data provide useful comparative information on the countries, legal jurisdictions and types of SGDs currently being disclosed. Our analyses reveal that gender diverse boards are associated with greater levels of SDG disclosures, with such commitment being more significant when there is more than one woman on the board. We also find that women board members are associated most with the PEOPLE and PLANET groups within the SDGs, and our results are robust to additional analyses and endogeneity concerns.Originality/valueAlthough gender diversity has been examined within a corporate social responsibility and ethical, social and governance lens, this examination needs to be extended to the SDGs, given the latter’s multi-year horizon and involvement from governments, the private sector and a very broad cross-section of the global community. Our results reinforce global calls for increasing gender representation at the highest levels of organisations to meet the expectations of a greater range of stakeholders in terms of SDG commitment.