A diverse workforce is not only good for business, but good for the environment. In this paper, the authors investigated the relationship between the percentage of women appointed as managers and firms’ carbon emissions and found that gender diversity in the workplace could mitigate climate change.
The paper covered 1,951 listed companies in 24 industrialized economies over the period 2009-2019 and concluded that a 1% increase in the number of female managers within a firm leads to a 0.5% decrease in a firm’s carbon emissions.
The research also found that gender diversity at managerial level has stronger mitigating effects on climate change, if women are also well-represented in political institutions and civil society organizations. Following the Paris Agreement, the authors found firms with greater gender balance reduced their carbon output by 5%, as women acted more efficiently to curb emissions.