If the Shoe Fits: Women on Your Board
by Miki SaxonA Friday series exploring Startups and the people who make them go. Read all If the Shoe Fits posts here
Do you have or are you planning to put a woman on your board as you grow?
If you are like most of tech and many other companies you aren’t/won’t.
What if it wasn’t about diversity, but about money?
What if having a woman would actually increase your ROI and valuation?
Most boards—public or private, tech or not—fit perfectly into the description offered by one governance expert: “male, pale and stale.”
The last thing most tech people consider themselves is stale, but when it comes to what women want in a product/service or how to engage them they usually come up short.
Doctors and pharmaceutical companies learned the hard way that drugs act differently in men and women.
The automobile and many other industries have traveled a slow and painful road to understanding how and why women buy their product, as well as what they want.
But can just one female board member make that much difference?
One recent report from Credit Suisse analyzed 2,360 companies around the world over the six years ended in December 2011. It found that companies with one or more women on their boards generated higher average share prices and better returns on equity during that period than companies with no women as directors.
As a startup your board is small and usually made up of investors, but that doesn’t stop you from having women on your advisory board, executive team and in senior positions.
Just please don’t use the tired old excuse of “no qualified women available.”
It isn’t true, but it certainly drives home your “stale” mindset.
Image credit: HikingArtist
