How firms benefit from having more women on boards

The evidence is clear: firms do better with women on board – so writes Andre Spicer over at The Conversation:

One interesting recent study points out that companies with more women on the board tend to do better on the basis of objective measures, such as return on assets and return on equity. However, they tend to do worse on more subjective metrics, such as stock-based measures of performance.

The reason for this is that market analysts and investors often take fright at women being appointed to a board. This is because women are perceived as poorly performing – even though the evidence points in the opposite direction.

The full piece is well worth a read for its review of the evidence both for and against, as is the Department for Business, Innovation and Skill’s document, The Business Case for Equality and Diversity.