The Effect of Women’s Leadership on Carbon Disclosure by the Top 100 Global Energy Leaders

Nurshahirah Abd Majid () and Amar Hisham Jaaffar
Additional contact information
Nurshahirah Abd Majid: College of Graduate Studies, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, Kajang 43000, Selangor, Malaysia
Amar Hisham Jaaffar: Institute of Energy Policy and Research, Universiti Tenaga Nasional, Jalan IKRAM-UNITEN, Kajang 43000, Selangor, Malaysia

Sustainability, 2023, vol. 15, issue 11, 1-26

Abstract: The energy sector is one of the main sources of carbon emissions and the most significant global polluter. Women’s concerns and the climate crisis were strongly associated when issues about climate change were first articulated in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals stressing gender equality and climate mitigation actions have received very little attention in the last decade. Consequently, the primary issues raised by this study are the energy industry, and women and climate change. This study examined the effect of women’s leadership on carbon disclosure among the top 100 global energy leaders from 2018 to 2020. This study unequivocally recognizes the effect of women’s leadership as assessed by the number of female board members who are industry experts, serve as advisors, and pose as proxy community leaders for global energy leaders. This study’s sample consisted of 291 observations of global energy leaders sourced from Thomson Reuters’ database. For the panel data analysis, STATA 14 (Version 14.) software was applied as the empirical methodology. The empirical findings showed that among the top energy leaders globally, women leaders increased the degree of carbon disclosure. The findings of this study provide novel insights into the importance of women’s leadership in the energy sector for enhancing and promoting carbon disclosure. The validity of hypothesized links in the findings lends support to the resource dependence theory from the viewpoint of the energy leaders. This study also provides guidance for practitioners, governments, and policymakers on how to combat climate change, encourage the inclusion of as many women as feasible on boards, the promotion of gender parity, and support efforts to achieve the net zero carbon target.

Keywords: carbon disclosure; energy industry; women’s leadership; resource dependency theory (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: O13 Q Q0 Q2 Q3 Q5 Q56 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/8491/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/15/11/8491/ (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:15:y:2023:i:11:p:8491-:d:1154012

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 ().