Towards higher sustainability: If you want something done, ask a chairwoman

The debates on sustainability and ESG agenda increasingly highlight how important human capital is in defining the future for businesses. This study aims at empirically investigating the impact of having a woman chairing the board and/or one of the board committees on ESG performance. With the adoption of a sample including all FTSE-MIB Italian companies from 2007 to 2018, our findings document that chairwoman enhances ESG performance. However, we find that the critical mass of women on boards negatively affect such relationship. This puzzling result may suggest a change in the board dynamics of companies with chairwomen, once a critical mass is reached.