Interval Based Gender Diversity Composite Indicators. Evidence from the European listed companies

Purpose - The purpose of this research is to assess the role of women within listed companies in terms of the structure of corporate governance and working conditions This study aims to construct an original interval based composite indicator of the gender diversity considering different assumptions on the construction of the composite indicator. In this way the composite indicator built can be considered more robust than a classical version of the same indicator. Design/Methodology/Approach – The data collection consists in the analysis of the issues on gender diversity included in the ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) scores extracted from Bloomberg database, with a specific focus on Governance and Social variables. Composite indicators are a very important tool to analyse and evaluate policies and sectors. The problem in using the composite indicators is that the results which can be obtained can be dependent to the assumptions given on their construction. In this sense we have already considered an initial approach in the construction of the composite indicator (Paoloni, Doni, Drago, 2016). We take in to account different assumptions and we are able to construct an interval based composite indicator. In this way we are able to consider a value useful to the comparison (the chosen assumption), a centre of the composite indicator, and the range which is related to the variability due to the different assumptions.