Women empowerment principles – Practice what you sign?
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2025-07-07
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en
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Corporate participation in voluntary standards, such as the Women's Empowerment Principles (WEPs), signals to stakeholders that companies are prioritizing broader social interests beyond financial gain. However, the credibility of these commitments remains underexplored. This study aims to assess whether companies that commit to the WEPs perform better regarding behaviour aligned with the WEPs’ principles compared to non-signatories. To address this question, the analysis draws on a panel dataset comprising 976 firm-year observations from 780 unique companies over the period 2019–2023. The study applies a fixed effects model with robust standard errors clustered at the firm, industry, and country levels to examine behavioural differences between signatories and non-signatories of the WEPs. I created proxies for WEPs-aligned behaviour by combining ESG indicators that represent WEPs principles. The results show that signatories outperform non-signatories on established proxies for WEPs-aligned behaviour, both individually and aggregated. However, the analysis does not find evidence that signatories exhibit greater improvements in behaviour compared to non-signatories, after signature, which suggests that the differences result from self-selection biases. These findings contribute to the ongoing debate on the effectiveness and credibility of voluntary sustainability standards and offer new insights into the real-world impact of corporate commitments to women’s empowerment.
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Faculteit der Managementwetenschappen