Does gender diversity in the workplace mitigate climate change?

Arbeitspapier

We match firm-corporate governance characteristics with firm-level carbon dioxide (CO2) emissions over the period 2009-2019 to study the relationship between gender diversity in the workplace and firm carbon emissions. We find that a 1 percentage point increase in the percentage of female managers within the firm leads to a 0.5% decrease in CO2 emissions. We document that this effect is statically significant, also when controlling for institutional differences caused by more patriarchal and hierarchical cultures and religions. At the same time, we show that gender diversity at the managerial level has stronger mitigating effects on climate change if females are also well-represented outside the organization, e.g. in political institutions and civil society organizations. Finally, we find that, after the Paris Agreement, firms with greater gender diversity reduced their CO2 emissions by about 5% more than firms with more male managers.

Object Details

• ISBN: 978-92-899-4983-5
• Language: Englisch

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Series: ECB Working Paper ; No. 2650

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft ; Asset Pricing; Trading Volume; Bond Interest Rates ; Pension Funds; Non-bank Financial Institutions; Financial Instruments; Institutional Investors ; Corporate Finance and Governance: General ; Externalities ; Climate; Natural Disasters and Their Management; Global Warming
• Subject: Carbon emissions ; Female managers ; Global warming ; Paris Agreement ; Green economics

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Geistige Schöpfung
• (who): Altunbaðs, Yener ; Gambacorta, Leonardo ; Reghezza, Alessio ; Velliscig, Giulio
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (who): European Central Bank (ECB)
• (where): Frankfurt a. M.
• (when): 2022

Further information

• DOI: doi:10.2866/58134
• Handle: http://hdl.handle.net/10419/261184
• Last update: 10.03.2025, 11:45 AM CET