Gender-related discourses in corporate annual reports: an exploratory study on the Bangladeshi companies

Gender inequality is one of the major concerns in the corporate sector irrespective of the contexts and cultures. Though the situation appears to be improving, women’s earnings are still significantly lower than that of men for comparable work (World Bank, 2019). Even in the Fortune 500 listed companies, women hold only 6.6 per cent of CEO positions (Zillman, 2019) and represent an average of 22.5 per cent of global board positions (Delloitte, 2018). The disparity is further intense among businesses operating in the developing economies (Jayachandran, 2015). Albeit gender diversity can benefit businesses in the form of improved return, enhanced competitiveness and public image (Warth, 2009), elements of persisting inequalities still prevail. To address this concern, organizations increasingly provide gender-related disclosures to demonstrate the status of women within their workforces and signal their commitments to the greater transparency (Bernardi et al., 2002; Grosser and Moon, 2008). Gender reporting allows the stakeholders to assess how an organization respects and contributes to gender parity in everything that it does (GRI, 2009). Considering the growing awareness of gender disparity in the corporate sectors and public accountability to women, this study explores the gender disclosures of listed companies in Bangladesh, an emerging economy.