Good Story on Women in Senior Management and Performance

The Financial Times has an interesting piece on a new McKinsey study suggesting, at least in Europe, a correlation between having a high proportion of women in leadership roles and superior financial performance.

The report, launched at the Women’s Forum for the Economy & Society in Deauville, France, finds these companies do better than their sector in terms of return on equity, operating result and share price growth. The management consulting firm also reports that companies around the world where a third or more of the senior team are women score higher, on average, than those with no women on nine criteria of “organisational excellence”. These criteria include accountability, innovation and work environment.

Apparently, there has been research in the U.S. showing comparable results among the Fortune 500. McKinsey points out that this is an issue of correlation and not causality - there is no proof that senior women cause the improved performance. It could be that the presence of female senior managers helps change the corporate culture in ways that make higher performance more likely, or it could be that a culture that brings in a significant number of women happens to be the type of corporation that does better. I'd provide a link, but this is a subscription-only source.