Board gender diversity in football clubs: Exploring the findings from Bibliometric and Manual Content Analyses

The Agenda 2030 for Sustainable Development (SD) and the Environmental, Social, & Governance (ESG) factors present a new challenge for companies globally. To thrive in this environment, businesses must adapt to these demands, leading to a significant transformation in corporate management. It is now crucial to align the goal of profit maximization with efforts to lessen negative impacts on the environment and society. Football clubs around the globe, including those in Italy, are starting to adopt initiatives that align with community guidelines on corporate sustainability (CS). This study will shed light on the phenomenon of gender diversity in companies’ boards of directors (BoD) and in those operating in the football sector. We want to highlight the gap between men’s and women’s work opportunities, addressing the glass-ceiling phenomenon, i.e., the glass ceiling that limits women’s access to top roles, and highlighting the pay gap in equal roles and quantity of hours worked. We conduct a systematic literature review using MySLR and Bibliometrix software, totaling 92 papers. The analysis yielded several key findings, notably a growing focus in academia on gender diversity issues. Since 2015, there has been a marked rise in publications addressing gender diversity in sports. Furthermore, the evaluation of these papers highlighted the limited presence of women on football boards clubs. This study offers theoretical, practical, and social insights. In addition, it contributes to the scientific literature on the gender gap in sports.