This Week In Gender Wars: CEO Ousters And Google Memos

August didn’t start off so well for the women of Wall Street.

Alphabet Inc GOOGL’s staff provoked a national debate on the technical capabilities of women, and the already-intimate cadre of female CEOs contracted with the ousters of Avon Products, Inc. AVP’s Sheri McCoy and Mondelez International Inc MDLZ’s Irene Rosenfeld.

Factoring in the losses, women now lead just 27 of S&P 500 firms. Just one, International Business Machines Corp. IBM’s Ginni Rometty, heads a Dow 30.

But interestingly enough, both scholarship and prolific investors suggest that, if you want to make money (and do it with integrity), you should probably place it in the hands of women.

Decisive Leadership

Kevin O’Leary has attributed much of his investment profits to women leaders, who he said tend to employ successful strategies such as the pursuit of pragmatic goals, accessibility to employees, ego-free delegation and unparalleled time management.

“Not some of my returns but all of my returns have come from companies either owned or run by women,” O’Leary has said about his “Shark Tank” investments.

Merits Of Humility

Women have similarly been recognized for improving the accuracy of financial estimates.

Companies with female CFOs generally provide results closer to analyst forecasts than do companies with male CFOs, and prediction accuracy improves when firms transition from male to female CFOs, according to research by Sudip Datta, Department of Finance chair at Wayne State University.

“Female CFOs enhance forecast accuracy by providing high-quality disclosure,” Datta wrote in his report.

Similarly, female analysts tend to produce more accurate earnings estimates primarily attributable to a lower level of overconfidence in their knowledge and abilities, Datta reported.

The more on-point financial estimates of women analysts and CFOs bode well for attentive investors.

Related Links:

9 Milestones Reached By Women On And Off Wall Street

Could Paid Menstrual Leave Exacerbate Workplace Discrimination?