In search of materiality for nonfinancial Information under the female lens, after the Directive 2014/95/EU transposed. A multiple Italian case study

The issue of gender inequalities and the contribution of women in companies is extensively debated in the literature. Instead, there are few contributions on the topic of the information relevance on gender issues, with particular regard to women's perspective. This study is situated in the conceptual framework of the legitimacy theory to verify the extent of the information provided by Italian public companies about women and gender issues before and after European Directive 2014/95 is transposed into the national legislation. To comply with the paper aim a qualitative research methodology based on multiple case studies was used. The authors carried out a content analysis on the non-financial statement – or on simi-lar documents – produced by Italian non-financial companies listed on the FTSE-MIB before and after the first application in Italy of the national legislation implementing the European Directive. The findings reveals that there is a growing interest in the topic but, even today, it is not possible to assert that it is considered of primary importance, since only a relatively small number of companies, required to analyse gender issues, give relevance to the topic. Nonetheless, the results obtained explain that the directive impact on the quality and quantity of information produced by businesses is largely positive. No empirical evidence was found regarding specific information on the effect that COVID-19 has had on fe-male work in the company. This study fills a gap in the existing literature and can have an impact not only on the behaviour followed by companies but also by European and international policymakers. The study's conclusions propose insights to policymakers in order to measure the effectiveness of the rules on non-financial disclosure, given the absence of a precise framework that requires companies to adopt uniform and universally accepted accounting standards or principles. This paper can also contribute to the current consideration about the updating of the mentioned directive by the EU and European and international accounting bodies.