Social responsibility disclosures and gender board composition: the german' universal banks case

Abstract

Following Menassa and Brodhäcker (2015) and motivated by recent studies concerning women in leading positions and the influence that the socio-economic composition of Board of Directors has on social policy-making, in particular corporate social responsibility and philanthropic initiatives, this study uses a sample of 169 German universal banks to examine the possible influence of female membership of German universal banks Boards of Directors on the extent (quantity) of their social disclosure. This paper reports no significant variation of the quantity of social disclosures by German universal banks with female membership of BOD versus those with no such presence. These results are subject to the limitations of the sample and thus should be approached cautiously.