No. 498

Research from McKinsey has found that firms that outpace their peers on the number of women in top management see a financial performance benefit of up to 15% over the industry median. Might a similar benefit be true on the world stage? To find out, the authors studied data from 188 of the 193 United Nations–recognized countries. Their most striking finding was that women, when leading very diverse countries, were significantly more likely than men to have fast-growing economies. In these countries, female heads of state had an average of 5.4% GDP growth in the subsequent year, as compared with their male counterparts’ 1.1%.