From The Guardian\’s comments section, of course:
It\’s also difficult to show that the females made the companies more profitable.
Not so much actually.
http://www.theglasshammer.com/news/2010/03/11/is-norway-working-the-case-for-women-on-boards/
Dittmar and Ahern’s study found that when a board had a 10% increase in the number of women, the value of the company dropped. The bigger the change to the structure of the board, the bigger the fall in returns.
An excellent result, don\’t you think?
Add Carly Fiorina to the mix and the average really starts to drop…
Not to mention the Sardine woman or Nicola Cocoa.
Anway. Serious point:
Surely the results did not fall because the appointees were women, so much as because the appointments were not made on merit? They were not the best people for the job, they were just the best females. So the overall ability of the board was less than it might have been, so business wasn’t so good.
You’d get the same result by insisting on a quota of disabled people or of different races, or of different religions or… ooooh I must stop giving them ideas mustn’t I.
Simples.