Abstract
With growing regulatory changes with respect to the composition of the board of directors, the regulation for the appointment of women directors on the corporate boards has seen an upsurge in recent times. It is quite evident to believe that with so many countries mandating the appointment of women, the reasons are not just social but also economic in nature. The extant literature provides enough evidence based on various social and psychological theories that support the diversity element for better decision-making. This study is an attempt to analyze the scientific articles to understand the growth of this concept under various dimensions. The search, undertaken over the Scopus database, led to the retrieval of a total of 547 articles published during the period 1989–2021 which, after final filtration, brought the total number of results to 352 articles. VOSviewer software was employed for the purpose of analyzing these articles which helped in the formulation of bibliometric citation, co-citation, and co-word maps. The findings suggest the prominent countries, significant authors, major studies, and top journals in this domain. In addition, the study also identifies the various dimensions such as financial performance, social performance, environmental performance, sustainability disclosures being impacted due to the presence of gender diversity. The study is significant and unique based on the pretext that it uses the Scopus database for the purpose of bibliometric mapping whereas past studies have used the Web of Science database, thus the study’s outcome made a strong corroboration in identifying emerging paradigms in the gender diversity literature
Highlights
Gender balance under various dimensions, such as economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, has shown improvements in recent years at the global level
These obstacles, based on the societal perceptions, can take several forms including favoritism of male directors for other male directors (Hutchinson, Mack, & Plastow, 2015), the tendency of directors to feel more comfortable among directors from the same gender and demographic as per the similarity attraction theory (Chatman & O’Reilly, 2004), and the idea of prestigious occupations such as directorship belonging to males (Ridgeway, 2014)
The bibliometric analysis clearly reveals that the knowledge base of gender diversity on boards has grown exponentially from 1989 to 2021
Summary
Gender balance under various dimensions, such as economic participation and opportunity, political empowerment, educational attainment, has shown improvements in recent years at the global level. The advancement of women studies has given rise to various phenomena that portray various kinds of reasons that showcase the situations due to which even if women are being employed on board, they are not able to escalate to the upper echelons. One such phenomenon is the “double burden syndrome” that highlights the dual responsibilities of household along with the professional responsibilities of work which are considered as traditional gender-based responsibilities (Hochschild, 1990) this does not permit the women directors to take up higher responsibilities even if they wish to owe to lack of efficiency (Bratberg, Dahl, & Risa, 2002)
Sign-in/Register to view highlights & summary Sign-in/Register to access full text options 
Talk to us
Join us for a 30 min session where you can share your feedback and ask us any queries you have
Schedule a callDisclaimer: All third-party content on this website/platform is and will remain the property of their respective owners and is provided on "as is" basis without any warranties, express or implied. Use of third-party content does not indicate any affiliation, sponsorship with or endorsement by them. Any references to third-party content is to identify the corresponding services and shall be considered fair use under The CopyrightLaw.
