Can Women Save the Economy?

Marissa Rauch Women are the hottest business commodity around: They’re better educated than men, and companies that employ more women make more money. Womenomics authors Claire Shipman and Katty Kay say we should look for a “pink lining” to the recession.

As we look for silver linings in this global recession, maybe we should switch lenses—and look for a pink lining instead. Evidence is emerging that women could be the key to getting us out of this crisis. Indeed, if there’d been more of us around at the higher echelons of finance, the world might not have charged so headlong into this slump in the first place.

Women, it turns out, are no longer P.C. nods to corporate diversity; we are the hottest business commodity around, in this economic environment, as much as any other. And this new recognition of corporate clout is giving us power beyond our feminist dreams.

Look at these numbers. In our new book, Womenomics, we call them pink profits.

Read an excerpt from Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success

Companies that employ more women make more money. A two-decade-long survey by Pepperdine University of 215 Fortune 500 companies found that by every measure of profitability—equity, revenue, and assets—companies with the best record for promoting women outperform the competition. Indeed, those companies with the very best record beat the average by up to 116 percent.

The University of California at Davis has drawn similar conclusions. It recently found that companies with women in senior management have “stronger relationships with customers and shareholders and more diverse and profitable business.”

This pattern holds even, and maybe especially, right now. A study of the French stock exchange last year shows that the more women there were in a company’s management, the less its share price fell in that bad year. In fact, the only large French company whose share price actually rose last year was Hermès, which also has the second largest feminized management team of any company on the CAC 40.

So, what’s going on?

Well, companies are finding that women’s management styles are not only different, but good for business. It’s now pretty clear that Mars and Venus have muscled their way into the boardroom, too. When it comes to business styles, women are more open and inclusive than men. We tend to encourage broader participation in meetings and like to foster consensus. We nurture subordinates more effectively and prefer conciliation over confrontation, empathy over ego. We are also more cautious, more risk averse. We take a longer term view of decision making than men.

Womenomics: Write Your Own Rules for Success By Claire Shipman and Katty Kay 256 pages. HarperBusiness. $28. It’s those last qualities which seem to stand up to this particular economic climate. The theory behind the French stock exchange figures is that in this environment, investors prefer more cautious management.

Add to those pink profits and feminine traits the fact that we women are better educated (we earn 57 percent of all undergraduate degrees in America and 58 percent of all graduate degrees) and better at spending (we now buy more than half of all cars in America and are responsible for 83 percent of all consumer purchases) and you begin to see the wave of power driving womenomics.

With a talent shortage looming, companies need us as never before. They know it and we should, too, because it is the key to revolutionizing the workplace to fit our particular female needs.

This is the other side of the Womenomics equation. We can take that power and use it to live and work the way we’ve always really wanted.