Board gender diversity and organizational environmental performance: An international perspective

Abstract

Organizations can play a significant role in advancing gender equality and environmental sustainability. Increasing the number of women on corporate boards has been offered as a means to increase organizational environmental sustainability. We examined relations between board gender diversity and organizational environmental performance in two studies. The first study examined board gender diversity's relations to corporate environmental sustainability initiatives for 79 largest Turkish organizations. Even though only a small proportion of directors among Turkish organizations are women, the results linked their representation on corporate boards to better environmental performance for all categories of environmental sustainability. The second study examined board gender diversity-corporate environmental performance relations using a sample of 1,776 organizations from 45 countries and representing 8 cultural clusters, greatly expanding the cross-cultural scope of our research. Board gender diversity correlated positively with overall environmental performance (r = 0.26), however there was much variability by country. Gender gap/parity at the national level did not appreciably influence board gender diversity-environmental performance associations. However, there were systematic differences between cultural clusters countries belonged to. Associations were positive and sizable for Anglo, Latin Europe, and Middle Eastern cultural clusters, negligible for Nordic Europe, Eastern Europe, and Confucian Asia cultural clusters, or mostly negligible with great variability for the Southern Asian cultural cluster. Findings highlight the important role that national context and culture play in how women's representation on corporate boards translates or fails to translate into organizational environmental sustainability performance.