An idiotic piece on The Economic Times website, an extract below, its sole redeeming sentence (emphasis ours) making a mockery of the preceding sentence:
“The presence of women on boards – and the potential diversity of opinion they bring – supports good corporate governance, which is positive for credit quality. The data do not demonstrate direct causation between gender diversity and credit quality,” Moody’s said in a report.
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Justice for Men & Boys 
Yes if one reads the piece closely one can see that in fact the higher % in “developed” economies reflects that these include the presence of more services rather than the unsurprisingly higher % of manufacturing, extractive and agricultural in the developing economies. So the other reading is that increased gender diversity is a result of greater affluence rather than a contributor. At its most basic that the “post industrial” societies and their services can afford more passengers on boards. After all it is the absence of competition that alows public services to get away with becoming less and less effective as they have become more and more “diverse”.
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It Is reasonable to think that the higher ranked companies have more means to afford prioritizing image issues at the expense of having the right people on board.
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Thanks Paol, exactly so, in my view. Plus almost all the women appointed to major corporate boards are appointed as Non-Executive Directors, where they can do the least harm. As we say in the UK, such well-paid but undemanding posts are “money for old rope”!!!
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“Potential diversity of opinion”
So no actual diversity, only possibly ?
Which is a quite poor statement since as you said mike there is no direct causation. It should be easy enough to demonstrate with financial figures.
So I’m going to suggest other “potential” diversity indicators that say otherwise
on top of this, I’m not sure I could ever again trust Moodys, given their role along with S & P, and Fitch in the 2008 financial crash( eg their role in upscaling credit rating of poor investment)
if you can mess up such an obvious assessment of the credit market in 2007/2008, then you are going to continue to make mistake( is it possible that Moodys is also infected with the “diversity not merit” virus?)
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