Abstract
This study investigates the link between board gender diversity and corporate sustainability performance, and how national cultural values influence this relationship in European countries. Based on Upper Echelons Theory, Stakeholder Theory, and Institutional perspectives, we posit that gender diversity on boards promotes a greater focus on environmental, social, and governance (ESG) goals for firms due to enhanced ethical monitoring, stakeholder engagement, and legitimacy, while we expect the impact of gender-diverse boards to be contingent on the surrounding cultural context. We employ a dynamic panel dataset of 8,197 firm–year observations corresponding to 818 listed companies from 31 European countries during the period 2014–2024, and we utilize the Difference Generalized Method of Moments (GMM) estimator to control for unobserved heterogeneity, persistence in ESG performance, and endogeneity. We find a strong positive relationship between board gender diversity and corporate sustainability performance, which is moderated by national cultural values in Europe.