Gender disclosure: The impact of peer behaviour and the firm's equality policies

Abstract

Gender equality is the future towards which society and companies have to move, and it is thus essential to know what efforts organisations are making. In this paper, we analyse the transparency of multinationals in matters of gender, in accordance with the requirements determined by the global reporting initiative (GRI) and United Nations (UN). The results suggest that higher levels of gender equality support the decision to report all GRI+UN indicators, a decision that has been maintained over time and is not moderated by peer disclosure. This behaviour facilitates the inclusion of companies in different reputation lists as a consequence of a greater commitment to gender equality, although these rankings also assess the completeness of the information when considering the disclosure of the GRI+UN indicators. The effect differs according to the practices of peer firms.