More and more women are reaching the top of major companies. And shareholders should be pleased: on average, companies with a "female" component perform better than their peers. This is the finding of the CS Gender 3000 study, published by the Credit Suisse Research Institute.

Three thousand companies under scrutiny

The researchers draw on a database of more than three thousand companies headquartered in forty different countries. For each of them, they record how many women hold leadership roles as chief executive officer, chief financial officer, chief operating officer and head of shared services. The picture that emerges is clear: when there is gender diversity within management roles, financial performance is better and stock market valuations are higher.

The researchers are nonetheless keen to pour cold water on the findings: this data alone is not enough to be certain that a causal relationship has been identified. "Do better companies hire more women, do women choose to work for the most successful companies, or is it women themselves who contribute to improved company performance? – the report reads –. The most likely answer is a combination of all three options."

When women are at the top, performance improves

The percentage of women on boards of directors is growing, rising from 9.6 per cent in 2010 to 12.7 per cent at the end of 2013. Differences between countries are nonetheless considerable. The most female-represented boards are Norwegian ones, followed by those of France, Finland and Sweden, where women account for nearly 30 per cent. Japan and Pakistan bring up the rear, failing to reach even 2 per cent.

A positive correlation has been found between the presence of women at the top and market capitalisation: smaller companies tend to have less gender diversity. But the financial data are even more interesting. In 2013, the return on equity of companies with at least one woman on the board of directors averaged 12.2 per cent, compared with 10.1 per cent for those with no female representation. This is one of the most widely used indices for calculating a company's financial results, obtained by dividing net income by net equity. The figures are equally telling when examining the share performance of the world's largest companies (that is, those with a market capitalisation exceeding 10 billion dollars): those with at least one woman on the board outperform the others by an average of 26 percentage points.