**1. Introduction**

Now more than ever, society's expectations for business are rising. According to McKinsey [1], nine out of ten Generation Z customers agree that businesses have a duty to solve environmental and social challenges. Younger people believe that organizations that are ecologically and socially conscious are better places to work, and the great majority believe that they would be more loyal to companies that share their values. As the need for social accountability grows, so do the responsibilities placed on leaders.

What is interesting, although not surprising, is that certain characteristics of leaders strengthen the company's corporate social responsibility (CSR). Board gender diversity has been recognized as one of the most important drivers for environmental sustainability and it has attracted the attention of both researchers and policymakers. For instance, in 2004, Norway was the first nation to adopt a quota for female director, while other nations, such as Germany, France, Belgium, Iceland, and Italy

followed suit and adopted mandatory female quota. Further, the United Nations (UN)'s fifth Goal of Sustainability Development states that "Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls".

Prior researchers claim that female directors are not the same as male executives when it comes to leadership [2]. Females are more collaborative and promote participatory decision making [3]. They were often regarded as using the approach to persuade followers to shift from self-interest to collective interest via shared concern for major objectives. Furthermore, female executives value universalism and kindness more than male executives, and less self-enhancement ideals like accomplishment and power [4]. Thus, gender diversity board is more likely to seek long-term strategy and is stakeholder-focused, which are critical to sustainability and successful CSR practices, and this probably is a reason why shareholders, legislators, and regulators possess a common interest in increasing gender diversity in the boardroom.

Despite the fact that both researchers and the general public have paid close attention to CSR and gender, the evidence in favor of female leaders leading to higher CSR remains mixed (for review paper see [5]). Several studies have indicated that female directors have a good impact on company sustainability and social responsibility, play an important role in ethically managing the firm's sustainable operations, and support the adoption of ethical standards (for e.g. see [6–8]). While some scholars argue that female directors have no influence on sustainability [9, 10] or lowers involvement in sustainable development projects [11]. Hence, there is a need to understand this relationship and probe the likely factors and theory behind these inconsistent results. In this chapter, we focus on the role of female leaders, particularly female directors, on CSR and sustainability of the company. We argue that CSR is essential to today's business and there are several theories to explain the reason behind this relationship. Nevertheless, theories are related and there are no sole to explain the relationship. Most of the theories based on the notion that women have greater moral and community attitudes than men. Furthermore, some determinants were not taken into account in previous research, resulting in inconsistency findings. In order to fill this void, we reviewed literature in both financial theories and social psychology theories, mapping their relevance to the relationship between CSR and female leaders. We noted, based on major theoretical perspectives that female directors lead to higher CSR performance and CSD. Future study in this topic is required to provide a greater understanding of the relationship especially under various economic conditions and multi-country studies to supplement the existing literatures.

We provide a brief review of the literature on CSR and gender diversity boards in the sections that follow, as well as why these two topics are important. The review will then move on to the theoretical perspectives that could be used to explain the relationship. Section 5 discusses the missing determinant that could explain the inconsistency in the impact of female directors on CSR. Following this, the chapter discusses the direction for future research. Lastly, we end with the conclusion remarks.
