Board Characteristics and Stakeholder Engagement and ESG Performance: The Relevance of European Gender Parity

The main goal of this study is to explore the effect of country-level gender parity with a board characteristics and stakeholder engagement on ESG performance in sustainable companies. The sample comprises 940 sustainable international sustainable firm-year observations from the following 13 countries: Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and United Kingdom for the period 2013–2022. The results provide evidence that country-level gender parity moderate negatively the effect of board gender diversity and busy directors on boards and ESG performance. Furthermore, the findings also show that country-level gender parity moderate positively the effect of stakeholder engagement and ESG performance. When the ESG performance is separate in the three pillars, the results find that country-level gender parity moderate negatively the effect of board gender diversity and busy directors on boards and governance performance while this effect is positively in the association between stakeholder engagement and governance performance. These results suggest that the governance pillar influence notably in the ESG performance. This study contributes to the scant research exploring the variation in the relationships between boards of directors' characteristics and ESG performance by focusing on one seldom explored of such sources, gender parity.