Why Am I a Passionate Advocate for Women on Boards? It’s All About the Numbers

By Cindy Zu

As a global financial executive, startup investor and board member, I know first hand that having a women sit your company’s board results in bigger VC deals and more capital.

I’m a passionate advocate for having more women join private and public boards. Why? The proof is in the numbers. Start-ups with women on their boards raise 2.4X more VC funding. Companies with both women and men on boards outperform and are more innovative.

And it goes even deeper than that: boards with women are more innovative, more effective and bring more exciting, diverse perspectives to the table. The end result? Stronger and more resilient companies.

In fact, based on an analysis of 14,391 firms from 1996 to 2010, a Journal of Financial Economics study found that diverse boards have lower volatility, better performance and invest more in research and development (R&D) than their non-diverse counterparts. What’s more, MSCI — an independent research firm that develops global equity indexes — found that companies with fewer women on boards had more than average governance-related controversies.

More stability, better performance and more innovation sound attractive but are companies truly the taking steps needed to involve more women on boards? The answer: slowly but surely. According to MSCI, nearly a third (31.5%) of global boards had at least three women in 2017. This figure is up from 27.4% in 2016. That’s a 4.1% increase from 2016 to 2017 in the number of boards around the world who engaged both men and women. It’s great progress, but we can definitely do a lot better in 2019.

Even if companies may be slow to develop gender diverse boards, investors are certainly making it clear that they value women on boards. In fact, according to the 2017 Spencer Stuart U.S. Board Index study, some institutional investors are starting to vote against all-men boards in US companies.

In today’s uber-competitive VC and business climate, it’s clear that there’s only room for a few winners at the top. Want to be that winning company? Recruit both exceptional women and men on boards, because only together can we create the stronger, more exciting and more profitable companies of the future.

Join me this International Women’s Day (Friday, March 8th) at the Angel Capital Expo, where I give a keynote address on venture trends in the US, Pacific Northwest and most importantly, female founded companies.