Abstract

This paper investigates whether the marital status of women directors predicts firm environmental performance in family and non-family businesses. We argue that rather than simply reflecting gender juxtaposition, the marital status of female directors can explain heterogeneity in firms’ environmental performances by triggering gender role attributions that lead to women board members enhancing their firms’ contributions to environmental sustainability. Building on social role theory and the socioemotional wealth perspective, we advance that gender role attributions unfold differently in family versus non-family firms. Leveraging a dataset of Italian-listed companies from 2003 to 2019, we find that the greater presence of married female directors enhances environmental performance. However, while this result holds more strongly for non-family firms, a positive contribution of married female directors only manifests in family businesses when they belong to the controlling family. This paper advances the discussion of women’s participation on corporate boards in family firms and firms’ contributions to addressing environmental issues by shedding light on the individual traits and firm characteristics that shape social expectations and women’s behavior on boards.