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Female-Run Companies Often do Better Than Male-Run Ones (Video)

Posted by Roblimo on from the sometimes-the-best-man-for-the-job-is-a-woman dept.

Today's interviewee, Viktoria Tsukanov, is one of the executives at predictive marketing company Mintigo who did a study in January, 2015 that seemed to show that large companies with female CEOs "achieve up to 18% higher revenue per employee than male CEOs." The study, titled "She’s the CEO and She’s Sensational," used financial data Mintigo collected on 20 million companies, and determined CEOs' genders by analyzing first names, so it was not subject to survey vagaries but was a straight data analysis job. Could this be a case of correlation and causation being unrelated? It's possible. It's also possible that the revenue per employee figures are affected by the fact that female CEOs are more common in healthcare and non-profit organizations, while men dominate manufacturing and construction -- and, as Viktoria pointed out in a blog post headlined "Women Just Raised the Bar. Big Time." there may be other factors at work as well.

The "18% higher revenue" figure specifically applies to companies with more than 1000 workers, while companies with fewer workers may average more revenue per employee if they have male CEOs. Besides discussing the study itself, in our interview Viktoria talks about how male employees might want to alter (or not alter) their behavior if they find themselves working for a female boss for the first time. She also discusses challenges a woman might face if she is suddenly put in charge of a heavily male IT or programming staff. Other thoughts she shares have to do with finding mentors and dealing with negative people, both of which apply to people of all genders. Interesting food for thought all around.

24 of 271 comments (clear)

  1. Why the fuck is there a video by iONiUM · · Score: 5, Insightful

    And why the fuck does it auto-play when I open the article?

    1. Re:Why the fuck is there a video by I'm+New+Around+Here · · Score: 2, Insightful

      I have it paused at 1:06 right now, just because I got tired of hearing her voice by then.

      It looks like she could give a good blowjob, but she'd be whiney about it first.

      --
      If you think I voted for Trump because of this post, you're wrong. I voted for Dr. Jill Stein of the Green Party. Again.
    2. Re:Why the fuck is there a video by Darinbob · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Still leaves open the question why in 2015 that web developers still haven't learned that automatically starting videos is a really bad idea.

  2. Clickbait? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    SJW, please....

  3. female run companies often go bankrupt too. point? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    feminists are the worst kind of ignorantly hypocritical sexists... and we can all agree, SEXISTS ARE THE WORST.

  4. Sexist article by r.freeman · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Would this article show up when talking about:
    "Male-Run companies often do better than Female-run ones" ?
    Would it? On Slashdot the news for SJWs - apparently.

    Btw such article would be correct (this statement is correct).
    Same goes for...
    Streight-run companies often do better than homosexual-run ones.
    Homosexuals-run companies often do better than streight-run ones.
    White-run companies often do better then Blakcs-run ones.
    Blacks-run companies often do better then normale ones.
    etc.
    Does anyone thing ONLY male CEO can ever bring a success?
    Of course not. What are you fighting with Slashdot?

    1. Re:Sexist article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

      No see if it was stating "male owned companies do better" it would be blamed on patriarchy instead of suggesting men might be better at something. However, if women do better, then it's brain neurology or hormones, or psychological differences or some character trait that women have more of.. It's not allowed to show men as being better in any area while playing fair. Socialist 'justice.'

    2. Re:Sexist article by quantaman · · Score: 1, Insightful

      So confounders may mean the study is useless (ie women CEOs more common in high revenue industries), but if it performance gap does exist there are some useful narratives.

      For all the groups, women, homosexuals, blacks, etc, it is known that they are under-represented as CEOs and that they experience some level of employment discrimination (or at least disadvantage).

      If black or gay CEOs underperform it may be the case that there is a shortage of talent occurring earlier in the corporate ladder. Fixing that requires an earlier intervention, better education policies or better talent development in the organization.

      Women CEOs overperforming suggests that the talent is available but it isn't being used. In this case the fix is to simply use more of the talent that's available.

      Of course an infographic isn't exactly a publication in Nature. There's a decent shot the data doesn't suggest what they think it suggests.

      --
      I stole this Sig
    3. Re:Sexist article by AmiMoJo · · Score: 1, Insightful

      Do you have any evidence that an article about male run companies doing better wouldn't be posted? Sounds like you just want to be the victim.

      Anyway, the likely reason for any statistical advantage for female run companies is simply that they are better at hiring women, and thus have access to a larger pool of candidates. A larger pool means a higher average standard, and on top of that they probably have better conditions than average and are better able retain skilled staff.

      --
      const int one = 65536; (Silvermoon, Texture.cs)
      SJW, n: "Someone I don't like, and by the way I'm a fuckwit" - AC
    4. Re:Sexist article by david_thornley · · Score: 5, Insightful

      If a group faces discrimination, the ones that make it through the discrimination are likely to be unusually good. I'd expect the average woman to be better than the average man in male-dominated fields, and the average man to be better than the average woman in female-dominated fields.

      --
      "When you have eliminated the unacceptable, whatever is left, however improbable, must be the truthiness" - Holmes
  5. Comment removed by account_deleted · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Comment removed based on user account deletion

  6. HP & Xerox by Nutria · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Run by women, not so great revenue per employee.

    --
    "I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
  7. 'often do' by YrWrstNtmr · · Score: 3, Insightful

    And often don't. WTF is this?

  8. Feminist troll bait by Rooked_One · · Score: 2, Insightful

    I'm not quite sure why a video has just auto-played on slashdot, but the tone of her voice made me shut it off immediately. Sorry miss. You might have a fancy degree, but you're 23, maybe 24 years old, with little to no real world experience.

    Something something causation != correlation.

    Wait a second - what is a "VP of customer success?" It doesn't matter... She's the only person out of 8 "leadership" roles that has a vageen.

    *DISCLAIMER! I do not hate women - just know it all bitches. Yes, I said it. Wanna fight about it?

    1. Re:Feminist troll bait by serviscope_minor · · Score: 1, Insightful

      I count, let's see...


      1. Sorry miss.
      2. You might have a fancy degree,
      3. but you're 23, maybe 24 years old, with little to no real world experience.
      4. She's the only person out of 8 "leadership" roles that has a vageen.
      5. just know it all bitches.

      5 massive chips on your shoulder. Possibly shoulders. I can't see how you could have that many on just one shoulder. There are many things wrong with the article but those aren't any of them.

      --
      SJW n. One who posts facts.
  9. Re:Whatever by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Why not? While you're at it, may as well go with the flow and tell them that along with sexists, they're racist, homophobic islamophobes too. All non-SJW white males are these days, according to the internet.

  10. What a well executed troll by sjbe · · Score: 5, Insightful

    seemed to show that large companies with female CEOs "achieve up to 18% higher revenue per employee than male CEOs."

    Let's assume that is true for a moment. The important question is WHY? The second question is whether the higher revenue is due to the efforts of the CEO or merely a second or third order effect of something else. Merely noting that some category of people tends to run companies with higher revenue means nothing by itself. They are spouting a fact and trying to goad people into drawing unwarranted inferences about the reason why. This is a top notch troll.

    The study, titled "She’s the CEO and She’s Sensational," used financial data Mintigo collected on 20 million companies, and determined CEOs' genders by analyzing first names, so it was not subject to survey vagaries but was a straight data analysis job.

    My first name is normally associated with the opposite gender and I'm male. This is a stupid way to determine gender. I speak from a lifetime of firsthand experience.

    Plus with a title like that I'm fairly confident that there is a built in bias at work here.

    Could this be a case of correlation and causation being unrelated?

    Gee you think?

    It's also possible that the revenue per employee figures are affected by the fact that female CEOs are more common in healthcare and non-profit organizations, while men dominate manufacturing and construction

    Let's add in the fact that female CEOs are generally under-represented in large companies and companies that choose female CEOs might be better at promoting the most talented person instead of their golfing buddy.

  11. TFA is a mess. by khasim · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The first problem is that this is not about correlation or causation. TFA is just a mess. Here's an example:

    There were quite a few other striking differences in leadership:

    Men tended to achieve better results than women in companies with up to 1,000 people, however in larger companies, female CEOs averaged 18% higher revenue per employee than their male counterparts

    Companies with female CEOs were more likely to work in the B2C space, while male CEOs were more likely to work in B2B

    There are more women in healthcare and non-profit organizations, while men dominated the manufacturing and construction space.

    None of those three examples have anything to do with leadership.

    That's "apples vs oranges" not "correlation vs causation".

  12. Re:Totally Worthless by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, they say that female led companies are more common in B2C industries, more common on the coasts (esp. New England to Washington D.C. ), and more common in healthcare industries, and in non-profits. They apparently didn't control for any of those.

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  13. You can do better, Slashdot. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    In other news, male-run companies often do better than other male-run companies... so what difference does this insight make? As a woman I find it stiflingly stupid. I'd even go so far as to call it sexist, but to both genders. It demeans women by making it seem like the real complexity of such things is beyond them, and it demeans men by continuing this asinine recent online push towards feigned female superiority. Did anyone need to know this, and if they did, were they the types who needed it put in such an antagonistic manner?

  14. Re:Correlation and causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Insightful

    calling out hypocrisy is not misogyny

  15. Re:Correlation and causation by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 3, Insightful

    calling out hypocrisy is not misogyny

    FYI if you so much as comment on an article about women and your comment isn't full of praise, you're a misogynist.

  16. Special treatment by watermark · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Perhaps we can stop giving woman owned businesses special treatment now? No more penalties if you don't give enough contracts to woman owned businesses.

  17. Re:Totally Worthless by Cereal+Box · · Score: 2, Insightful

    Try the whole study again with profit, or at least, net income, and it might interesting.

    I'm guessing she did, but the results didn't match her expectations.