The Influence of Board Gender Diversity on ESG Controversies: Do Family Control and CSR Committee Matter?

This study examines how board gender diversity relates to firms' exposure to ESG controversies and how this relationship depends on ownership structure and governance formalization. Drawing on an attention‐based perspective, we argue that women directors influence corporate responsibility not only through monitoring but also by shaping what boards notice and address. Relying on a panel of 69 French firms listed on the SBF 120 index over the 2011–2023 period (897 firm‐year observations), we estimate dynamic panel models using a system GMM estimator. A greater representation of women on corporate boards is associated with higher ESG controversy scores, which denote lower exposure to controversies. This association becomes more pronounced in firms under family control, where reputational exposure heightens the salience of issues raised at the board level, although this moderation is sensitive to how the dependent variable is measured. By contrast, the effect diminishes when a dedicated CSR committee is in place. This pattern is consistent with a substitution logic, whereby the formalization of sustainability oversight concentrates responsibility within a specific structure and, in doing so, attenuates collective engagement with ESG‐related risks across the board. The findings indicate that governance mechanisms do not operate cumulatively and that their effectiveness depends instead on how attention and accountability are distributed within the board.