Does committees' gender diversity affect firms' environmental and social performance?

Abstract This study examines the relationship between gender diversity and the corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance of companies using a sample of 810 French firms from 2011 to 2019. We focus on specific dimensions of CSR. Specifically, we examine the presence of women on different board committees, which, unlike the board of directors, are not subject to regulations regarding the minimum representation of women. Overall, our results show that the presence of women on board committees positively impacts CSR performance, except for the environmental innovation subdimension. This finding implies that women on board committees could bring new insights to specific areas of CSR engagement. The negative impact on environmental innovation can be explained by the risk avoidance behavior of women in financial decision‐making. As green innovations are very risky investments requiring significant financial resources and take longer to deliver a return on investment, women board members are more unwilling to invest in them than their male counterparts. Our results provide evidence that women's representation on audit, nomination, and compensation committees more prominently impact CSR performance than their representation in CSR committees.