Companies Less Evil When Women Occupy Board Rooms

Even though we’re all boy crazy and have subpar upper body strength, new data suggests that companies are better citizens when there are more women in the board rooms. Now, if only our periods didn’t make us all so crazy!

CBS News reports that a paper published by Harvard University earlier this year was further analyzed by Catalyst, a nonprofit group. The original research found a correlation between more women sitting on a corporate board of directors and increased philanthropic giving by that corporation. Catalyst found that that lady/being socially responsible correlation was dramatic.

According to the findings, companies with three women on the board give twenty-eight times more money to charity than companies with no women on the board. Additionally, each additional woman on the board of directors represented an average $2.3 million increase in annual charitable giving. A company’s touch also became softer and more feminine when women held officer positions; companies with 25% female officers gave 13 times more money to charity than companies with no female corporate officers. Each additional percentage point increase in the proportion of women in officer positions represented a $5.7 million increase in charitable giving.

Now, as you can see by this tee shirt I bought at Forever 21, I am no good at math, but those sound like some pretty significant numbers. But why does the presence of women in leadership positions influence the amount of money a corporation gives to charity?

Some research suggests that, either naturally or due to a lifetime of socialization, women generally exhibit more empathy than men. It would stand to reason, then, that they’d generally be more interested in devoting some corporate profits to what they perceive as the greater good rather than the bottom line.

Whatever the reason ladybusinesses are more willing to open up their wallets to the less fortunate, it can’t be our natural shopping abilities; if anything, that would detract from our willingness to give money away rather than spend it on shoes.