Does Gender Diversity Drive Sustainability? Investigating Women's Role in Corporate Environmental Performance

ABSTRACT Research on gender diversity has largely centered on leadership roles, leaving the impact of women in the broader workforce on corporate environmental performance (CEP) underexplored. This study investigates whether greater female representation across the workforce enhances CEP, measured by emissions intensity. Two integrated mechanisms help explain this link: the values diffusion mechanism , grounded in social role theory, posits that pro‐environmental orientations shaped by gendered role socialization diffuse across organizations to foster organizational citizenship behaviors for the environment that reinforce formal systems; and the diversity‐as‐resource mechanism , rooted in the resource‐based view, suggests that workforce gender diversity functions as a valuable and inimitable resource that broadens perspectives, enhances problem‐solving, and strengthens firms' environmental capabilities. Using 15,635 firm‐year observations from 40 countries (2010–2022), we find that higher women workforce representation significantly reduces emissions intensity, with consistent effects across most industries and national contexts. By integrating these mechanisms, the study extends theories of gender and sustainability to the workforce level, offering implications for managers, policymakers, and investors.