Sydney Higley

Does adding women to boards make companies greener? This study explores the relationship between gender diversity on organizations’ boards of directors and environmental sustainability (ES) using a meta-analytic approach. Organizations are seeking evidence-based solutions to address climate pressures as the completion date for the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals nears (2030). Previous literature has demonstrated that board gender diversity is linked to organizational ES, but the direction and strength are disputed. This ambiguity arises from research that measures different aspects of ES (e.g., emission reductions, resource conservation), and various gender diversity measures (e.g., percentage of women, number of women, gender homogeneity). Therefore, the Green Taxonomy is used to group ES measures into five meta-categories, and independent meta-analyses are conducted for each environment-gender measure pairing. A literature search that spanned eight large databases used a combination of keyword pairings to identify relevant articles. Meta-analytic results revealed systematic variation across Green Taxonomy dimensions, with the strongest effect emerging for the percentage of women on the board and Conservation (r = 0.26, 95% CI = [.19, 0.33]) and Overall ES (r = 0.26, 95% CI = [.21, 0.31]). These findings demonstrate how board gender diversity’s environmental impact depends critically on which sustainability outcomes organizations pursue, not whether diversity matters. Not only does understanding the relationship between corporate board characteristics and organizations’ ES provide the opportunity to relieve the strain on the planet, but it also benefits the organizations with a competitive market advantage and improved stakeholder and customer perceptions.