Sustainability reporting and IC disclosure. The materiality of gender equality among the ESG topics

Italian listed medium firms attentive to sustainability reporting are characterised by a great incidence of intangible assets and intellectual capital (IC) as key drivers of differentiation from their competitors. As IC disclosure in its components of human, structural and relational capital supports company transparency, this article investigates the degree of integration between IC disclosure and sustainability reporting and whether the gender equality has been identified in the disclosure of IC as a material matter among the ESG reporting topics, highlighting the best practices of Italian companies. By using the textual analysis, we explore how corporate governance bodies of Italian listed medium companies address IC disclosure and gender materiality in sustainability reporting. The estimation uses hand-collected data disclosed by a sample of Italian listed medium firms from 2020 to 2024. We measure IC with a weighted index and examine the determinants of IC growth across sub-index classes composed of human, structural and relational capital. The findings reveal that the IC index positively relates to the firm’s gender materiality and ESG determinants. The article broadens the knowledge about IC disclosure in sustainability reporting and accounts for its relationship with gender materiality among ESG topics under the EU recent legal constraints.