Abstract
This paper investigates progress in female senior management by examining how gender issues are represented and accounted for in the Annual Reports (ARs) of publicly listed companies in the UK and South Korea. ARs are central corporate communication documents through which organisations present their performance, strategic priorities, and perspectives on the business environment. As such, they constitute an important vehicle for shaping and signalling change in women’s roles in business. Despite continued global concern over the persistence of the female “glass ceiling”, approaches to addressing gender inequality vary across cultural and institutional contexts.
Adopting a comparative and multimodal analytical approach, the study explores how different forms of “languaging” within ARs, including narrative text, visual imagery, graphs, and financial accounts, construct and communicate gender-related information. Rather than assuming that these modes uniformly reinforce a single corporate message, the analysis highlights how they may articulate different, and sometimes competing, meanings. In line with Bassnett et al. (2018), we argue that the interplay among these communicative forms can both enable and constrain what is conveyed about gender equality and senior management progression.
By identifying intra- and cross-cultural similarities and differences in how gender progress is reported, the study contributes to a deeper understanding of corporate gender equality communication. It offers new insights into the communicative strategies organisations employ to frame women’s advancement and the extent to which such reporting reflects substantive progress. The findings have practical implications for accountants and corporate leaders seeking to strengthen their roles as change agents in advancing gender equality, and to support broader sustainability agendas, particularly Sustainable Development Goal 5 (Gender Equality), within non-financial reporting and accountability frameworks.