Introduction by Alison Maitland. Profiles by Sarah Halls, September 25 2009, FT.com

This inaugural ranking comes as the global crisis has turned a spotlight on male domination of the corporate world: would we be better off if more women were in charge? Some prominent people think so. Helen Alexander, first female president of the CBI, the UK employers’ body, says diversity is needed to prevent “groupthink” by white male boards. And 17 leading businessmen, including the chairmen of Anglo American, BP and Tesco, recently called for faster progress in appointing women to senior positions, saying the economy needed the best talent more than ever. They equated the urgency of the issue to that of climate change and poverty.

Our report celebrates women business leaders around the world. The fact is that their numbers remain tiny. Just 3 per cent of Fortune 500 chief executives are women. Across Europe, only 10 per cent of board directors of the largest companies are female (quotas have made Norway the exception, with more than 40 per cent) and the numbers are even lower in Asia. This is all the more surprising given the substantial evidence that better gender balance has a positive impact on performance. Studies by Catalyst and McKinsey in the US and Europe have found a correlation between the number of women in a company’s leadership and the company’s profitability. Financial outperformance is most significant when there is a “critical mass” of women – 30 per cent or more. And Nick Wilson of Leeds University Business School has found that having women on the board can reduce a company’s risk of bankruptcy by 20 per cent.
      
Should we expect the handful of female chief executives to lead the charge on gender? Some do preside over deep cultural change. Take Xerox, where one-third of the management team are women and where Anne Mulcahy recently handed over to Ursula Burns, the first black woman to lead a Fortune 500 company. But a small group of women chief executives – or women on boards – cannot be asked to carry all the weight. Change requires willing leadership from the male majority. The financial crisis has, at least, made the business and moral case for change more apparent than ever.

What about better governance? The collapse of some of the world’s biggest banks has been blamed partly on directors’ failure to ask tough questions. A study by The Conference Board of Canada found that boards with women directors paid greater attention than all-male boards to audit and risk controls. And a US study showed that boards with more women directors recorded better attendance and were more assiduous at monitoring areas such as CEO performance.

Alison Maitland is an FT contributor and co-author of ‘Why Women Mean Business’, published this month in paperback.

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