Carbon Performance and Board Gender Diversity: The Moderating Effect of Patriarchal Attitudes

This chapter investigates the influence of gender diversity on boards of directors on carbon performance, taking into account the moderating impact of prevailing patriarchal attitudes across countries and years. Using a dataset comprising 665 listed firms from 17 European countries over the period 2005 to 2019, our findings reveal a positive relationship between the presence of women on boards and an improvement in carbon performance. Furthermore, we find that the negative moderating effect of patriarchal attitudes attenuates and, in some cases, reverses the positive relationship between gender diversity on boards and carbon performance. This study contributes significantly to the existing literature in two ways. First, it employs greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions as a novel measure of carbon performance in the corporate governance context, providing a more robust assessment. Secondly, it innovatively incorporates patriarchal attitudes as a proxy for gender-related cultural factors, introduced as a moderating variable in the relationship between gender diversity and carbon performance.