Corporate Social Responsibility and Gender

This chapter examines corporate social responsibility (CSR) through the lens of gender. To accomplish this goal, we delineate the overlap between gender and CSR at both the organisational and individual levels of analysis. Specifically, we summarise the existing research on the role of gender as a consideration in the type of CSR policies that organisations implement, the effect of the gender of key decision-makers on organisations’ CSR initiatives, and individual female employees’ (and other female stakeholders’) perceptions of and responses to CSR efforts. We draw the conclusion that this nascent area of research includes interesting findings, though continued theoretical and empirical work is needed to assert substantive claims on the complex relationships between CSR and gender at multiple levels of analysis.