Beyond Board Diversity: Workforce Gender Composition as a Signal of Social Sustainability in Corporate Credit Ratings

ABSTRACT This study examines whether workforce gender composition, as an observable organizational outcome shaped by firms' employment practices, is associated with external evaluations of corporate credit risk. Drawing on signaling theory, we argue that workforce gender composition reflects the cumulative outcomes of firms' employment practices and can function as a visible signal of their underlying employment systems. Using 1837 corporate bond observations from Korean listed firms between 2018 and 2023, we find that firms with higher female workforce representation receive more favorable credit ratings. Additional analyses suggest that firms' broader social sustainability performance provides a potential pathway linking workforce gender composition to credit ratings. We further find that the association is stronger among firms operating in more opaque information environments, where observable organizational signals become more informative. By shifting attention from highly visible governance indicators to workforce‐level outcomes embedded in firms' employment systems, this study contributes to research on gender diversity, social sustainability, and organizational signaling in external financial evaluations.