Title: Power relationships in gender-related disclosures: exploring language in selected Fortune 500 companies' sustainability reports

Authors: Dewan Mahboob Hossain; Nik Nazli Nik Ahmad; Siti Alawiah Siraj

Addresses: Department of Accounting and Information Systems, Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka, Dhaka, 1000, Bangladesh ' Department of Accounting, Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, Malaysia ' Department of Accounting, Kulliyyah of Economics and Management Sciences, International Islamic University Malaysia, Malaysia

Abstract: This research investigates power relationships in the disclosure on women and gender related issues in corporate sustainability reports. For this purpose fifty two companies from the 2013 Fortune top 100 list were selected. Critical discourse analysis (CDA) was conducted on the basis of Fairclough's (1989) framework. Fairclough suggested analysing the language from three dimensions: text, process and social. Through CDA the notions of power and hegemony were identified and explained with the help of Bourdieu's cultural capital as suggested by Everett (2004) and Aaken et al. (2012). The research concludes that discourses on women and gender carry the traditional patriarchal notions and reflect traditional ideas about women prevailing in most of the societies. Women were presented as a distressed species and companies tried to portray themselves as the saviours of women. The findings of this research contribute to the critical accounting literature by highlighting the strategic use of language in relation to gender issues by large global corporations.

Keywords: women; sustainability reports; critical discourse analysis; CDA; gender disclosures.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBGE.2017.088254

International Journal of Business Governance and Ethics, 2017 Vol.12 No.3, pp.262 - 288

Received: 22 Jun 2016
Accepted: 18 Aug 2017
Published online: 30 Nov 2017 *

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