한국기업의 성별 다양성 워싱 = Gender Diversity Washing in Korea

다국어 초록 (Multilingual Abstract)

This study identifies and discusses the gender diversity washing of Korean companies and its consequences. An analysis of a sample of 800 firm-year cases that published sustainability reports between 2011 and 2021 yields the following results. We first find that the disclosure amount on gender diversity is not positively related to the proportion of female employees. Following prior studies, we then identify companies that frequently mentioned gender diversity in their sustainability reports but had a relatively low proportion of female employees as having engaged in gender diversity washing. We further find that the washers experience significantly more negative ESG incidents in subsequent periods. These results suggest that the identification of gender diversity washing is valid. We finally investigate how the information users, especially ESG rating agencies, react to gender diversity washing. We find that subsequent ESG ratings, S ratings, and worker-related evaluation scores of the washers are higher than otherwise. These results suggest that information users do not fully understand gender diversity washing, ultimately hindering efficient resource allocation. Our results also urge to consider potential social washing when establishing sustainability information disclosure systems.