Women and circular transition in agri‐food industry: The commitment to gender diversity as an engine of change

Abstract

[EN] The agri-food industry has a positive impact on society, providing a sustainable andhigh-quality food source for the world's population. However, this industry has a sig-nificant impact on the environment, which is essential to know and understand. Inthis article, we explore the importance of the circular transition in the agri-foodindustry and analyse the role that female directors, C-suite executives or managersand employees play in it. For a sample of the most relevant 243 agri-food companiesworldwide, over the period 2013–2022, we conduct Tobit and lineal regressions forpanel data to attend to gender diversity in firms and its consequences concerning thiscircularity environmental model. In a sector with unbalanced organisational levels interms of gender, the results show that the overall diversity of the companies favoursthe transition towards a circular model that is respectful of the environment, favour-ing the optimisation of resources and processes that lead to the generation of mini-mum waste, and unequivocally opting for ecological inputs, technologies, spaces andother goods. However, the individualised study of diversity at the organisationallevels confirms the unquestionable role that female leadership plays in the circulartransition of the agri-food sector when exercised from C-suite positions.