Sex-based misconduct, media exposure, and gender diversity: evidence from the US information technology boards of directors

The information technology (IT) sector is marked by breathtaking entrepreneurship, innovation, and labor productivity. However, it has demonstrated a remarkable failure in equitably distributing the benefits it generates to female employees. Operating on the premise that increased gender diversity on boards of directors would redress gender inequities in organizational culture, at least to some extent, we investigate the impact of media exposure of sex-based misconduct on the gender composition of IT boards of directors in the United States, an issue that has not received much attention in the scholarly literature on governance. Using Bloomberg data, we create a balanced panel of seventy-seven publicly traded IT companies for 2010–2019. Our dependent variable is the share of women on boards. We use two proxies for media exposure of sex-based misconduct, our independent variable: Google Trends and newspaper headlines that include the expressions “sexual harassment” and “sexual misconduct.” Controlling for a number of factors that do and do not change over time, we show that exposure of sex-based misconduct in the media has played a small, positive, and statistically significant role in increasing IT board gender diversity but has not succeeded in increasing women’s representation to the critical mass of three directors. Data limitations and the historic events of the coronavirus pandemic and Black Lives Matter social movement make it difficult to estimate the quantitative importance of media exposure in the #MeToo era (2017–2021). Our paper suggests a number of ways for cultivating a more inclusive organizational culture, an important firm resource.