Companies with women on their corporate boards perform better than companies lacking any female representation, according to a study of 2,360 companies world-wide, from 2005 to 2011.
The researchers focused on stock returns but also explored other measures of performance, including return on equity, which produced similar findings. For companies with a market capitalization higher than $10 billion, for example, those with women on their boards outperformed those lacking them by 26% over the period studied. The gains were concentrated after the 2008 financial crisis. The researchers were hesitant about offering sweeping causal explanations but suggested that companies with female board members tended to act in a more "defensive" manner, which served them well in lean times. (It may also be the case, to a degree, that well-run companies tend to appoint more women to their boards, the study said.)
"Gender Diversity and Corporate Performance," Credit Suisse Research Institute (August 2012)
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