Are women eco-friendly? Board gender diversity and environmental innovation

As a result of recent climate change impacts, environmental sustainability has received enormous attention from scholars and policy makers. Environmental innovation is one of the major ways of acting in harmony with the environment, but it also requires a significant amount of resources and strong corporate commitment. As boards of directors have great influence over the strategic direction of firms and are responsible for corporate environmentalism, we examine the likely relationship between board gender diversity (BGD) and environmental innovation measured as process innovation and product innovation. Based on a relatively large dataset (10,334 firm-year observations) of U.S. listed firms, we find that BGD has a significant positive association with environmental innovation. Furthermore, we also find that this relationship is more pronounced in less profitable firms and in environmentally sensitive industries. Our results remain robust to endogeneity issues and alternative proxies. We interpret our results under upper echelon and gender socialization theories and suggest important implications for policy makers.