Promoting women on African boards: An examination of board diversity provisions in corporate governance codes

Irene Nalukenge, Vidisha Ramlugun and Teerooven Soobaroyen

Chapter 22 in Handbook on Corporate Governance and Corporate Social Responsibility, 2024, pp 284-309 from Edward Elgar Publishing

Abstract: This chapter examines how sustainability commitments to gender equality and women’s empowerment are reflected in national/sectoral corporate governance codes and their reporting corporate governance reports of African listed companies. We reviewed data from 32 African codes and selected company annual reports. Our findings reveal that notions of board diversity and board gender diversity, as set out in the codes, are conceptualised, acknowledged (or sometimes made implicit), and expressed in different ways. Only 14 African codes (about 44 percent) refer to gender diversity, with few specifying the appropriate balance and mechanisms for achieving it. In addition, few companies disclose board gender ratios or board gender targets in their annual reports. We discuss the implications of these results and recommendations for policymakers and enabling institutions (e.g., institute of directors, code-issuing authorities, African Union agencies).

Keywords: Business and Management; Economics and Finance; Environment; Politics and Public Policy General Academic Interest; Sustainable Development Goals (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.elgaronline.com/doi/10.4337/9781802208771.00033 (application/pdf)
Our link check indicates that this URL is bad, the error code is: 503 Service Temporarily Unavailable

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:elg:eechap:21347_22

Ordering information: This item can be ordered from
http://www.e-elgar.com

Access Statistics for this chapter

More chapters in Chapters from Edward Elgar Publishing
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Darrel McCalla ().