New research shows that firms with a higher ratio of women in management have better resisted the financial crisis. Nearly all of the French national press, papers such as Le Monde and Le Figaro have reported on this study of Michel Ferrary, a professor of Human Resources at CERAM Business School.

Using data from companies in the CAC40, the equivalent to the FTSE 100, it is shown that the fewer women a company has in its management, the greater the drop in its share price since the beginning of the year; and the more women in management, the smaller the drop in share price. The market currently values risk adversity.
Firms with many women in management like LVMH (56% female managers) have gone down less than the CAC40. While stocks of more male-managed firms like Alcatel-Lucent (8.68% women), Renault (21.77% women) have fallen more than the CAC40.

"Feminization of management seems to be a protection against financial crisis. Several gender studies have pointed out that women behave and manage in a different way than men. They tend to avoid risk and to focus more on a long term perspective. A larger proportion of female managers balances the risk taking behaviour of their male colleagues."

Whether more female managers or gender diversity in management means better business performance too  was not researched.