Female leadership and corporate ESG performance: evidence from China

This paper pursues the first systematic investigation on the implication of Chinese female leaders in connection with environmental, social and governance (ESG) performance of their businesses. With a comprehensive firm-year dataset of ESG performance and financial variables that is complemented by person-level demographics, it shows: (a) Despite alternative measures and models, no relation is detected between female directors and overall ESG performance, which appears resulting from that female directors' impact on the social and governance pillar offset each other. (b) Female managers' contribution to overall ESG performance is unambiguously positive, which results from female managers' impact on governance pillar. (c) No significant quantile heterogeneity is detected between the nomination of female leaders and overall ESG performance, though pillar-level impact of female leadership differs between the best and worst ESG performers. (d) No critical mass effect is detected under the DID framework.