Do Female State Officials Improve Corporate Social Responsibility in their Jurisdictions? A Disadvantage‐Prohibiting Perspective

Abstract While prior studies on how state officials affect firm behaviour focus on an advantage‐promoting perspective, we propose a disadvantage‐prohibiting perspective to examine the effects of female state officials on corporate social responsibility (CSR). We propose that the disadvantage resulting from a female municipal official's gender role may incentivize her to mobilize a firm's CSR to counteract such a disadvantage, leading to higher levels of CSR activities of firms in her jurisdiction. Our approach contributes to a new perspective on how political officials affect CSR. Results of our analysis of a sample of Chinese publicly listed firms between 2009 and 2019 support our predictions. The relationship is stronger in provinces that are more accepting of traditional gender roles and for first‐term leaders. A supplementary study using a global sample shows the generalizability of our findings: firms in countries with female leaders have higher levels of CSR compared with firms in countries with male leaders.