In these difficult economic times, socially-conscious investing may not be at the forefront of everyone's mind. However, through various research over a period of years, it has been proven that greater diversity in the workplace has a correlation to higher profitability. A new gender index, highlighting firms with a great amount of gender diversity, is a good place to look for companies to invest in that value women in the workplace. It will be interesting to follow this index's performance over the next year, in comparison to the S&P, to see if the research holds true.
The Search for Women in the Boardroom
Selena Maranjian
March 31, 2009
If you're looking to invest in companies with diversity in the boardroom, there's no need to click around websites looking at bios, names, and photographs in search of people who seem to bring different expertise than your average Tom, Dick, or Harry. That would be time-consuming and a dubious way to find the good mix of business expertise, gender, and ethnicity that has been linked to better governance and higher profitability.
If you're particularly interested in gender diversity, a new stock index series introduced by the folks at Pax World and KLD provides a shortcut to finding promising investment candidates. The objective of The Gender Investment Index series is "demonstrating that gender equality is an important indicator of financial health, and that companies that empower women and encourage gender diversity outperform others over the long term."
Selection criteria for the index included representation of women on the board of directors and in management, programs and policies that support women (such as mentoring, maternity leave, and flexible schedules), and lawsuits or claims about discrimination or hostile work environments.
http://www.fool.com/investing/etf/2009/03/31/investing-in-women.aspx
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