Corporate Gender Culture

59 Pages Posted: 8 Jul 2021

See all articles by Renee B. Adams

Renee B. Adams

University of Oxford

Ali C. Akyol

University of Ottawa

Pauline A. Grosjean

UNSW Business School, School of Economics; Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR)

Date Written: July 4, 2021

Abstract

We show workplace culture is gendered. We apply computational linguistic models to listed firms’ reports to an Australian gender-equality agency to construct the first systematic measures of ‘corporate gender culture’—firms’ practices pertaining to the treatment of women across seven dimensions, from recruitment and promotion to maternity leave and sexual harassment. Our measures reveal that firms treat women systematically differently from men, but also that gender differentiation varies across industry and firm characteristics. The cultural dimension that best predicts women’s representation in corporate leadership is also the one that best predicts firm performance, namely equality of training opportunities.

Keywords: corporate gender culture, firm performance, gender diversity, computational linguistics, gender differentiation

JEL Classification: G39, L25, M50

Suggested Citation

Adams, Renée B. and Akyol, Ali C. and Grosjean, Pauline A., Corporate Gender Culture (July 4, 2021). UNSW Business School Research Paper Forthcoming, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3880650 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3880650

Renée B. Adams

University of Oxford ( email )

Park End Street
Oxford, OX1 1HP
Great Britain

Ali C. Akyol (Contact Author)

University of Ottawa ( email )

55 Laurier Ave E
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5
Canada

HOME PAGE: http://www.aliakyol.com

Pauline A. Grosjean

UNSW Business School, School of Economics ( email )

High Street
Sydney, NSW 2052
Australia

Centre for Economic Policy Research (CEPR) ( email )

London
United Kingdom

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