 Gender diversity on corporate boards: Evaluating the effectiveness of shareholder activismMahdi Rastad and John Dobson The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance, 2022, vol. 84, issue C, 446-461 Abstract: In this paper, we examine the effectiveness of shareholder activism as a change mechanism for improving gender diversity on corporate boards. We provide evidence that shareholders use both internal pressure through private negotiations that lead to a withdrawn proposal, and external pressure by submitting a proposal to vote in the annual shareholders’ meeting to draw public attention. While both are impactful, we find that improvement in board gender diversity is more responsive to private negotiations than to social pressure. We also find that shareholders’ votes in favor of diversity proposals are higher when a board is less diverse; but it’s the very existence of a proposal that matters and not how many votes it receives. Finally, we find that proposals sponsored by institutional investors are more effective in bringing gender diversity to corporate boards. Keywords: Gender diversity; Gender diversity quota; Women on board; Shareholder activism; Board of directors; Corporate boards; Shareholder proposals; Social responsibility (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:quaeco:v:84:y:2022:i:c:p:446-461 DOI: 10.1016/j.qref.2020.09.007 Access Statistics for this article The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance is currently edited by R. J. Arnould and J. E. Finnerty More articles in The Quarterly Review of Economics and Finance from Elsevier |
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