Document Type
Article
Publication Title
Virginia Law Review
Volume
109
Publication Date
2023
Abstract
This Article’s central claim is that disclosures can be used instrumentally to increase diversity in corporate America in terms of race, gender, sexual orientation, and disability. Until recently, scholars and policymakers have underappreciated this possibility because diversity was often omitted from the larger Environmental, Social, and Governance (“ESG”) disclosures context, even though, as this Article empirically shows, public companies make diversity disclosures in that context.
Diversity disclosures are important not only for shareholders’ interests in transparency, but also for the benefit of other stakeholders, including employees, customers, and the communities in which companies operate, who want to know whether companies are diverse to determine where to work, what brands to buy, and what companies value. The literature has yet to explore the significance of diversity disclosures for the benefit of all these stakeholders.
This Article argues that legal reform is needed to use disclosures to improve corporate diversity for the benefit of all stakeholders. Policy-makers must go beyond the confines of the securities laws to translate disclosure into societal change. This Article examines contemporary law and policy approaches that fall short of having forward-looking provisions that would have an impact on improving diversity. It proposes disclosure rules with statistical and forward-looking provisions and mechanisms that shareholder and employee activists, and others, can use to pressure companies to improve diversity incrementally.
Recommended Citation
Atinuke O. Adediran,
Disclosing Corporate Diversity, 109 Va. L. Rev. 307
(2023)
Available at: https://ir.lawnet.fordham.edu/faculty_scholarship/1279
