Ann Owen, the Henry Platt Bristol Professor of Economics, presented “The Performance Effects of Gender Diversity on Bank Boards” at the Gender and Career Progression Conference that took place at the Bank of England on May 14.
Former Hamilton professor Judit Temesvary, co-author of the paper, presented with Owen in a session on “What benefits does increased diversity convey to organizations?”
In their presentation, Owen and Temesvary showed that gender diversity has a positive impact on several different measures of bank performance, provided that a threshold level of diversity is achieved. The paper was recently published in the Journal of Banking & Finance.
The conference was sponsored by the Bank of England, the European Central Bank, and the Federal Reserve Board. It brought together academics, central bankers, and practitioners in the financial services industry to discuss the impact of the lack of gender diversity, barriers to women’s progress, and strategies to break down these barriers.
