This research examined whether an improved participation of women in the board of directors has any relationship with sustainability disclosure. Accordingly, the objective of this research was to examine the relationship between the number of women on the board of directors and social investment disclosure and energy disclosure in the sample of companies. The paper used a quantitative approach and data were collected from the archives of sustainability reports of five companies that formed the sample. The panel-data regression analysis was used in data arrangement. Five sample of companies over five years produced a (5 x 5) panel resulting in 25 observations. Data was tested at an alpha of 0.05. Results from all the analysis showed a P value below the research alpha (P < 0,05) indicating a significant relationship. Therefore, findings from the panel-data regression analysis disclosed a positive relationship between the number of women on the board of directors and corporate disclosure on social investment and energy consumption. Further analysis also disclosed that women on the board of directors are related with the overall number of women employees in the company. The paper concludes that within the sample of companies, women on the board of directors may influence sustainability disclosure such as energy and social investment. Women on the board of directors might also assist the companies to achieve gender equity employment goals. The research recommends that given the unique social and environmental proclivity of women, the corporate should recruit more women in the boards to enhance accelerated corporate sustainability performance. Further research using expanded number of companies is recommended.

This paper evaluated the relationship between chief executive officers’ gender and firm performance. Therefore, the specific objectives of the paper were: 1) to evaluate the relationship between the CEO’s gender and company turnover; 2) (...)

The authors examined environmental responsibility and financial performance nexus of Johannesburg Stock Exchange’s socially responsible investing manufacturing and mining firms during the period of 2008-2014. The study employs annual panel dataset of fourteen manufacturing and mining companies on the index, and Granger causality analysis using Gcause2 Baum’s version. The paper found unidirectional causal relationship between environmental responsibility, measured by emissions intensity and equity returns, and bidirectional causal relationship between emissions intensity and market value of equity deflated by sales at 1% significant levels. Impliedly, improvements in ‘energy efficient technologies’ to reduce fossil energy consumption (prevention activities) seem to exhibit value destroying tendencies, while improvements in ‘end-of-pipe’ activities seem to estimate a drive market value of equity deflated by sales and equity returns. The Pesaran CD and Breusch-Pagan LM tests confirmed existence of cross-sectional dependence amongst panel members. The authors tend to support institutional and stakeholder theories.

This article assesses the link between the four pillars of gender equality and extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa. Accordingly, the objective of the paper is to empirically examine whether the four pillars of gender equality, namely women’s health, women education, political participation of women and economic participation facilitate extreme poverty alleviation in sub-Saharan Africa. Data were collected from the World Bank development indicators and World Economic Forum Global Gender Gap Index for 25 sub-Saharan African countries whose data appear on both indexes for three years into the SDGs era. Th e paper applied a quantitative approach with secondary data on poverty gap index drawn from the World Economic Forum Poverty Gap Index for sub-Saharan Africa. Data for twenty-fi ve sub-Saharan African countries were analysed using the fi xed-eff ect panel data regression approach using the Hauseman model selection test. Findings from the analysis indicate that, ceteris paribus, an increase in the threegender equity variables namely economic participation of women, education of women and political participation and leadership of women in sub-Saharan Africa has a signifi cant potential to reduce extreme poverty in sub-Saharan Africa within the sample of study. Since the fi ndings of this study have shown that extreme poverty can be reduced through increased women participation in economic activity, education and leadership, the SDG of poverty alleviation can be improved in sub-Saharan Africa through better government provision of economic, educational and leadership opportunities for women such as providing women with free-interest small business start-up funds, free education for women and supporting women to ascend and survive in political and leadership positions in sub-Saharan Africa through a balanced quota for female leadership positions. Given that the women’s health variable did not prove to be signifi cant on extreme poverty, further research is recommended to separate the health variable into rural health and urban health variables in order to examine the possibility that either of the health clusters might contribute signifi cantly to reducing extreme poverty. Th is paper contributes to existing literature by providing an empirical evidence to show that gender equality in sub-Saharan Africa is a viable policy strategy for achieving the SDGs 2030 Agenda of extreme poverty eradication in sub-Saharan Africa; the paper also provides empirical model for future study.