Research firm Catalyst follows the trail of executive level female business leaders and the effects they have in the workplace. Recent studies have found women to be to be a vital component to executive management, so much so that there appears to be a link to a company’s fiscal success.
On average, companies with the highest percentages of women board directors outperformed those with the lowest; by 66% return on invested capital (ROI), 53% in return on equity (ROE) and 42% return on sales (ROS).
Companies with boards including at least three women evidently dominate in all three business measures of seven different sectors with the exception of “financial” and “materials.” (October 1, 2007, Forbes)
These findings should come of no surprise to anyone. In college the required reading for a health care management class I took included Why Are Some People Healthy and Others Not?: The Determinants of Health of Populations (Social Institutions and Social Change) (Social Institutions and Social Change).
Covering a number of studies, the authors concluded that the health of a society is directly correlated with the relative freedoms granted to women of that society.
It does beg the question, why did Catalyst find that only 14.7% of Fortune 500 boards make room for women as of 2006 (albeit, a decent increase over the 9.6% in 2005)? Perhaps the shortage of female senior management will see improvement as well in the near and distant future. Hopefully, we’ll see women reach parity at the executive and Board levels in the next few decades.
Women are now earning 58% of bachelor’s degrees and a matching share of graduate degrees
Today, women earn 67 percent of education doctorates, 26 percent of physical science degrees and 18 percent of engineering degrees, according to a federal survey. Women are also the majority of doctoral candidates in the social sciences, humanities, and, for the first time ever, in life sciences. (Grad Schools.com)
The pursuit of higher by women is outpacing that of men, which will increasingly bring women to the market who can track in the towards executive level careers.
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