Research: Board Gender Diversity Does Not Improve Company Performance
You can read this article as it was originally published in the New Zealand Herald here There is no evidence available to suggest the addition, or presence, of women on a company board causes a change in company performance In the past five years a drumbeat has echoed through business, a mantra if you like, that companies perform better when women sit at the board table. It intuitively appeals to our sense of fairmindedness and equality. It has become accepted wisdom, organisations as august as McKinsey, Harvard and, locally, the Institute of Directors have led the charge in promoting gender diversity. Unfortunately, it's also incorrect. There is no empirical evidence that supports this thesis at all. In 2015 two separate meta studies of board gender diversity were published*. Together they synthesised more than 140 separate studies with a combined sample of more than 90,000 firms from more than 30 countries. They found that: "The relationship between board gender