Utveckling av frivilliga upplysningar i års- och hållbarhetsredovisningar om jämställdhet i svenska företag

Abstract

In 2012, ten of Sweden's largest companies participated in a voluntary initiative to bring more women to top positions within the companies and 2016 a legal requirement was implemented regarding sustainability reporting including gender equality reporting. Thus, this paper will study the influence of both the initiative and the legal requirement on selected companies disclosed information and key figures regarding gender equality. The data found was conducted from selected companies annual- and sustainability reports, both voluntary and mandatory disclosures. A pre-study was conducted for all ten companies involved in the voluntary initiative. Then, a main study was conducted for three of the companies between the years 2007-2017. The paper found that the legal requirements from 2016 regarding sustainability reporting did not have an influence on the companies’ disclosures in this study. An explanation to this finding is that there has been a need for companies to legitimize their business regarding gender equality several years before the legal requirement arrived. The paper also found that the voluntary initiative did not have any impact on either the disclosed information regarding gender equality nor the growth of the key figures. It was noted that the key figures were growing in the same pace before and after the initiative. This paper also found that there is no continuity in the disclosed information regarding gender equality in the companies’ reports. Which could imply that the companies lack an overall structure in the reports regarding gender equality, thus, makes it difficult to compare the companies with each other and over time.