Gender diversity and environmental activism: Gender discrimination or socialisation?

This paper empirically investigates the association between different executive roles taken by women and environmental shareholder activism at the shareholder proposal filing stage and the withdrawal stage. Building on gender socialisation theory and the managerial power perspective, and with 2350 firm‐year observations from Standard and Poor's (S&P) 1500 companies in the United States for the years 2010–2018, we find that environmental activists display a greater propensity to target firms led by women CEO–Chairs at the shareholder proposal filing stage, while no significant preference is observed towards general women directors or CEOs. To explore the rationale behind this preference—whether it stems from gender discrimination or socialisation—we extend our investigation to the withdrawal stage and identify a significantly positive influence from both women CEOs and CEO–Chairs, with the influence from CEO–Chairs being more pronounced. We postulate that both the managerial power and women's socialised traits (such as being more altruistic, collaborative and communicative) are plausible explanations for this gender effect, and women without substantial legitimate power in environmental matters are unable to exert a significant impact.