The Eco-Gender Gap in Boardrooms

To examine what women bring to the boardroom table, we first show a significant gender gap in viewing the tradeoff between environmental and economic benefits using the Gallup Poll. We next demonstrate that such a gender gap extends into boardrooms: Having female directors is associated with more environmentally friendly business operations, but also with higher selling, general, and administrative expenses at the same time. Employing a rich set of director demographics and board characteristics, we show that none consistently supersedes the share of female directors in explaining corporate environmental performance, suggesting that female directors play a unique role in explaining firms’ investment in environmental protection. Results from an analysis using a California law change that imposed a boardroom gender quota point to a potentially causal effect from female directors.