Do Women Executives Make Workplaces Safer? Evidence from Workplace Safety Violations

In this study, we develop and test theory on whether, when, and how the prevalence of women in firms’ top management influences workplace safety – an important ‘do no harm’ dimension of corporate social performance. Consistent with our theorizing, we find that there is a negative relationship between the prevalence of women executives in firms’ top management and workplace safety violations. We show that the relationship is amplified by board gender diversity and ownership by institutional investors who advocate for greater gender diversity in firms’ upper echelons. We also show that the relationship is partially mediated by employee workload. Our findings have important implications for the management literature on the gender profile of firms’ top management and for the workplace safety literature.