Gender influence, social responsibility and governance in performance

Purpose - This paper aims to analyze the influence of gender diversity on the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR), corporate governance (CG) and economic and financial performance of Brazilian publicly traded companies. Design/methodology/approach - The sample comprises 68 non-financial public companies comprising the IBX100 index of BM&FBOVESPA. For that, it was used panel data modeling, correlation and ranking by TOPSIS method. Findings - The results suggest a significant relationship between CG and economic–financial performance when mediated by gender diversity. This relationship was not observed between CSR and economic–financial performance. Thus, it can be concluded that in a diversified board of directors, in terms of gender, better monitoring of managers can occur because of the increase in their independence in decisions, as well as performance increase. These results diverge from the literature on the influence of women’s participation in corporate boards in CSR. It is assumed that this result is because of the fact that the participation of women is recent in Brazil. Research limitations/implications - The main limitations are the number of companies analyzed, the choice of ISE index to verify the CSR variable and the metric used to verify the CG mechanisms. Originality/value - In general, this research contributes to the literature of the area, especially in Brazil, in confirming that the mediating variable gender diversity makes the relationship between CG and performance more significant.