Gender Diversity Matters to the Financial Performance of Corporations

Years of climbing up the ranks in corporate America has given me a unique perspective about the legitimate issues women continue to face when trying to advance their careers.  Incorporating a robust Gender Diversity initiative remains a challenge for many corporations, government agencies, academia and nonprofit organizations. The opportunity to change the culture of our workplace and communities is not always easy.  However, the working world we live in today is rapidly changing with more women entering the workplace.  50% of today’s workforce is made up of women, of which 37% are Mid-Level Managers and 26% hold Vice Presidents positions. That number will continue to rise as more women enter the workplace and aspire to advance into higher levels of leadership.  Yet, the discouraging fact remains an issue; women are not advancing!  A Wall Street Journal article recently highlighted a report by Catalyst, Inc. stated that only 11 chief executives of Fortune 500 companies are women, down from 15 in 2010.

Over the past several months, The Wall Street Journal has written two important articles discussing the topic of Gender Diversity and women being held back in corporations. One article was entitled, “Coaching Urged for Women, Inadequate Career Development Holds Back Female Executives, McKinsey & Company says.”  The article discussed the need to focus on developing mid-level management by giving additional leadership coaching and allowing women to hold positions that involve profit and loss responsibilities for an operation.  Another article was released on April 11, 2011, “A Blue Print for Change”, interviewed top business executives examining issues women face and what is holding women back in the workplace.

McKinsey & Company, Catalyst Inc., Heath Care Women Business Associates ( HBA), and many universities have published research analyzing  the correlation between gender diversity on corporate boards and financial performance. McKinsey and Catalyst recently published two separate studies with very similar data on the global results based on three performance measures: return on sales (ROS) return on investment capital (ROIC) and return on equity (ROE) averages for each company across the study time period.  A total of 524 companies in this study reported the following findings:

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