Does Board Gender Diversity Make Firms Less Greenwashed?

This study contributes to the literature on corporate environmental responsibility by investigating the impact of female board\r\ndirectorship on the environmental performance of listed financial and non-financial\r\nfirms in Europe from 2013 to 2022. We propose\r\na novel proxy for greenwashing that has not yet been implemented at the firm level in financial studies. We applied panel\r\nregression estimation with fixed effects to 1300 firm-year\r\nobservations. The misleading baseline results show a negative relationship\r\nbetween female board directorship and environmental performance. Conversely, the second layer of analysis indicates a\r\nnegative relationship between our greenwashing measure and female board directorship, supporting the positive role of women\r\non boards of directors; spurious environmental performance measures obscure this significant association. A set of robustness\r\nchecks and alternative specifications (generalized least squares and two-stage\r\nleast squares) confirmed the consistency of our\r\nempirical results. This study has theoretical and managerial implications by reinforcing the crucial role of women in top management\r\npositions as supporters of environmental initiatives.