New research finds female directors improve employees’ workplace experience
The new study by Dr Jiarong Li, Lecturer in Real Estate Finance at Henley Business School, finds that female directors improved internal Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR), having a significant impact on company culture.
A new study titled Female directors and CSR- Does the presence of female directors affect CSR focus? published in the International Review of Financial Analysis has found that increased female representation on corporate boards is associated with heightened internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) initiatives.
The research analysed data from all Chinese A-share listed companies looking at 7,583 data samples from between 2007 and 2021 to compare the impact of female directors on different components of CSR—namely internal CSR targeting employees, and external CSR directed at communities, environment, etc.
On average, female directors only comprised 12% of the corporate boards that made up the sample. However, firms with above-average female representation demonstrated substantially better performance on aggregate and specifically internal CSR.