Do Female CEOs Matter for ESG Scores?

Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) issues are important for consumers, investors, and other stakeholders. The same applies for gender diversity. We show that whether female CEOs seem to matter for the firm’s ESG profile depends crucially on the data used for the analysis: depending on the specific data provider, ESG scores for the same firms are either strongly and significantly positively associated, or not associated at all, with having a female CEO. Conclusions on this important topic are vulnerable to data discrepancies across ESG data providers