Firms with the most diverse workforces beat the return on assets of their country and industry group peers with the least-diverse by 1.6 percentage points, equating to average outperformance of 29% per year.
The research, titled ‘Lifting Global Growth by Investing in Women', looked at data from the past ten years and found greater workforce diversity can boost economic output by tapping into under-used talents and bringing different experiences and perspectives to the table.
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Understanding the human capital aspect of corporate assets is increasingly relevant from an investment perspective, according to the report.
"We expect disclosures to improve as human capital and diversity metrics become more established as drivers of financial performance and investment decisions," it said.
Companies closest to sex parity across key roles, including revenue-producing, engineering and top-paying roles, have outperformed the companies that are furthest away from an equal balance in these roles in terms of return on assets over recent years, according to the research.
Where middle management best mirrors women's representation in the overall workforce, companies generated 36 basis points higher risk-adjusted monthly returns compared to peers where this diversity metric is poor, between 2016 and 2022.
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Overweighting companies that promote more women into senior roles would have enhanced a portfolio's performance by 72 basis points per year over the benchmark MSCI World Index, over the past four years, the research found.
MSCI World Index companies with female CEOs have outperformed companies run by men by 1 percentage point, on average on the RoA measure over the 2014 to 2022 period, according to the BlackRock analysis.
Yet leadership of the biggest corporations are heavily dominated by men, with women making up only 6% of CEOs as of 2022.
Similar trends were found in the start-up space where women-owned or managed hedge funds have outperformed an average hedge fund by 10.5% over the last 16 years, the report found, while a survey of more than 350 start-ups showed women-owned start-ups delivered twice as much per dollar invested compared to those founded by men.
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Investing in companies with more women-friendly culture may also help boost performance, the study found.
Allowing for portfolio tilts towards companies with higher average maternity leaves taken would, according to BlackRock's analysis, have improved the portfolio's performance by 1.07 percentage points per year over the benchmark Russell 1000 Index over the past four years.
The report expects better disclosure and more standardisation of metrics will help improve understanding of these and other financial linkages.