Gender and Climate Change Disclosure: An Interdimensional Policy Approach

Melsa Ararat and Borhan Sayedy
Additional contact information
Melsa Ararat: Corporate Governance Forum, School of Management, Sabancı University, Istanbul 34956, Turkey
Borhan Sayedy: School of Management, Sabancı University, Istanbul 34956, Turkey

Sustainability, 2019, vol. 11, issue 24, 1-19

Abstract: This paper investigates the impact of corporate boards’ gender diversity on voluntary public disclosure of climate change risks in an emerging economy context in which environmental regulations are weak and markets are ineffective. The investigation relies on data from the CDP (formerly known as the Carbon Disclosure Project) as a corporate sustainability reporting initiative supported by institutional investors, based on a sample of Turkish firms that were invited to disclose their climate change risks and greenhouse gas emissions over the period of 2010–2019 through the CDP platform. We report that the presence of women on board committees, as a proxy for their active involvement in corporate governance, increases the likelihood of voluntary climate change disclosure. We, on the other hand, found no evidence of a positive impact on climate change reporting with women’s overall representation in boards. These findings lend support to board reforms that aim to increase effective representation of women on boards for the better management of sustainability risks and responsiveness to stakeholder demands in countries where legislators are reluctant to introduce climate change reforms.

Keywords: climate change disclosure; boards of directors; corporate governance; gender diversity; controlled firms; emerging economies (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/24/7217/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/11/24/7217/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jsusta:v:11:y:2019:i:24:p:7217-:d:298612

Access Statistics for this article

Sustainability is currently edited by Ms. Alexandra Wu

More articles in Sustainability from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().