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Women make up half of humankind, and it is reasonable for representative institutions such as corporate boards to reflect this.
女性占全人類的一半，企業董事會等代表性機構反映出這一比例也是合理的。
In 2022 the European Parliament ruled that at least 40% of non-executive directors at firms with more than 250 employees should be women by 2026.
2022 年，歐洲議會規定，到2026年，員工超過250人的公司中，非執行董事至少40%為女性。
Britain’s ftse 350 companies hit that mark last year, on average.
去年，英國富時350指數公司的平均水平達到了這一標準。
Japan, where only 18% of directors are women, recently told big businesses to get to 30% by 2030.
日本只有18%的董事是女性，最近才要求大企業到2030年將這一比例提高到30%。
America’s constitutional dislike of quotas dooms similar efforts.
美國憲法對配額的抵觸情緒注定了在美國類似的努力會失敗。
But its markets regulator wants firms to disclose diversity statistics, which may shame some into action.
但美國市場監管機構希望企業披露多樣性統計數據，這可能可以激勵一些企業采取行動。
Our annual “glass-ceiling index”, which ranks oecd members on ten indicators of female workplace empowerment (and can be found at economist.com/glassceiling), shows all this is having an effect.
我們的年度“玻璃天花板指數”對經合組織成員國的十項女性職場賦權進行了排名（見economics.com/glassceiling），結果表明，所有這些努力正在產生積極影響。
Across the club of mostly rich countries, women’s share of directorships reached 33% in 2023, an all-time high.
在主要由富裕國家組成的俱樂部中，女性擔任董事的比例到2023年達到 33%，創歷史新高。
In France, New Zealand and Norway it is nudging 50%.
在法國、新西蘭和挪威，這一比例正逐漸趨近50%。
Is there a business case for more female boards, as well as a moral one?
增加女性董事比例，除了道德上的考量，是否也有商業上的原因呢？
In 2020 consultants at McKinsey found that firms in the top quartile for board gender diversity were 25% likelier to outperform their industry average than those in the bottom quartile.
2020 年，麥肯錫公司的顧問發現，董事會性別多樣性排名前四分之一的公司比排名后四分之一的公司，業績上超過行業平均水平的可能性高出25%。
Studies have found that appointment of a woman as boss can boost a firm’s share price and price-to-earnings ratio (though not its return on assets).
研究發現，任命女性為領導者可以提高公司的股價和市盈率（盡管不能提高資產回報率）。
Yet so many factors influence a firm’s profitability that proving a causal link between representation and performance is next to impossible; companies that perform well for other reasons may have the luxury to also pay attention to things like diversity, for example.
然而，影響公司盈利能力的因素很多，幾乎無法證明性別代表性與績效之間的因果關系。例如，業績好的公司可能也有機會關注多樣性等問題。
So instead, Margarethe Wiersema of the University of California, Irvine, and Marie Louise Mors of Copenhagen Business School interviewed directors at 200 big companies in Europe and America.
因此，加州大學歐文分校的瑪格麗特·威爾斯瑪（Margarethe Wiersema）和哥本哈根商學院的瑪麗·路易斯·莫爾斯（Marie Louise Mors）采訪了歐美200 家大公司的董事。
They found that women are consistently better prepared for board meetings, had better attendance rates and were more willing to ask probing questions.
她們發現，女性董事在準備董事會會議方面始終表現更好，出席率更高，并且更愿意提出探究性問題。
Female directors in other words, are “setting a higher standard and mitigating the problem of groupthink”.
換句話說，女性董事正在“設定更高的標準，并緩解了群體思維的問題”。
That should be a boon for corporate governance.
這對企業管理來說應該是一個福音。
