The objective of this chapter is to provide a comprehensive review of the Equilar Gender Diversity Index (EGDI). The EGDI highlights the prevalence of women within the Russell 3000 company board of directors as a response to increasing calls for diversity from investors and other stakeholders. We begin by providing an overview of Equilar as an organisation, before outlining the purpose of the EGDI. We then move on to investigate how the EGDI is structured and the methodology used to construct it. Although the EGDI has a modest usage and awareness, we discuss a handful of academic papers, media articles and a high profile campaign that Equilar and its data are used and cited in before moving on to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of the EGDI. We conclude the article by making suggestions for future uses and how the EGDI can be improved.
Griffiths, Heather Marshall, YasminHumbert, Anne L.
Oxford Brookes Business School
Year of publication: 2021Date of RADAR deposit: 2020-02-19
This is a draft chapter. The final version is available in Handbook on Diversity and Inclusion Indices: A Research Compendium / edited by Eddy Ng, Christine Stamper & Alain Klarsfeld, published in 2021, Edward Elgar Publishing Ltd http://doi.org/10.4337/9781788975728.00020. The material cannot be used for any other purpose without further permission of the publisher, and is for private use only.