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This paper investigates the relationship between the presence of women on corporate boards of directors and sustainability practices of Italian SMEs. Using a unique survey on how SMEs in the Italian province of Brescia deal with two main pillars of sustainability (environmental quality and social responsiveness), we investigate whether women on boards promote, more than men, sustainable practices and which of the two pillars is targeted the most by women.

This chapter delves into the subtle pervasiveness of our cultural “scripts” about femininity and masculinity (Albertson Fineman 2010) , extremely difficult to uncover because they are masked in a social belief system, that “automatically” normalizes and reproduces structures of inequality. For this reason, we divided the chapter according to three main research questions, which correspond to three different sections: 1. Where do gender stereotypes come from? 2. What are gender stereotypes? 3. Are gender stereotypes a human rights issue?

The essay seeks to shed light on some of the main ideas that have characterized the work of the Centesimus Annus Pro Pontifice Foundation over the last three years.