The Eco Gender Gap in Boardrooms

Using the Gallup Poll since 2001, we uncover a significant gender gap in the tradeoff of environmental and economic benefits.

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Kai Li (UBC Sauder School of Business)

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IWH, conference room and via Zoom

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Dr Kai Li, a Fellow of the Royal Society of Canada (Class of 2022), holds the Canada Research Chair in Corporate Governance and W. Maurice Young Endowed Chair in Finance at the UBC Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia. Her research focuses on the economic consequences of corporate governance mechanisms.

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Using the Gallup Poll since 2001, we uncover a significant gender gap in the tradeoff of environmental and economic benefits. We explore whether such gender gap extends in boardrooms. Using firm- and facility-level measures over 2002-2021, we show that having female directors leads to more environmental-friendly business operations and lower environmental risk. To establish the causal effect, we resort to a California law change that imposed a boardroom gender quota. We show that neither board qualifications nor standard diversity measures supersede the share of female directors in explaining corporate environmental performance, suggesting that female directors contribute to diversity of thought.