Source: Business Daily
I welcome the recent Capital Markets Authority push for more women seats in the boardroom. The reason for this should not be gender equality but a more businesswise approach.

As Market Talk has informed you before, women represent one of the biggest opportunities in the world in this decade and beyond.

In fact the top competition to this opportunity is the environment.

In the book titled, Why women mean business: Understanding the emergence of our next economic revolution, the author suggests that women rank alongside the Internet and the environment as key issues that business leaders will face in the decades to come.

There has been high interest in the female economy, with a global women economy survey indicating that women feel underserved by most companies especially financial service providers and hi-tech equipment providers. More businesses are keen to understand women in order to capture the business that they represent.

A myth is told about a man who was asked to name his wish by a genie.

When he said he wanted to understand women, the genie declined and told him to ask for something else.

Likewise, in our research on handbag contents I noticed that men were very keen to understand what was in a handbag.

My point is, in order to unlock the business potential that women represent, there is no better way than to include them in the boardroom.

Indeed market analysis indicates that companies that have women in key positions are better led and are closer to their customers.

A survey on Female economy published in the Harvard Business Review estimated that women control more than $20 trillion dollars in consumer spend. My own research in Kenya indicates that women control almost double their incomes. Their influence on

purchases that were previously male dominated such as property, cars and hi-tech equipment has been growing with time.

In the boardroom women complement men, providing a more conducive environment for innovation to thrive.

This also means that companies that include women in their boards are likely to be more sustainable.

In an era of high corporate mortality, businesses may also have something to learn from women's less risky way of life. It is a fact that women generally have higher life expectancy than men.

A study by Shell in the 80s suggested that the average survival rate of a large corporation is half that of a human being.

Out of the 12 companies making up the Dow Jones index in 1900 only one General Electric survives today. Women may help a company survive longer by seeing the threat of emerging competition from unrelated industries through intuition.

The Sokoni magazine November/December 2011 issue had an article titled "What Spurs women supremacy in Marketing?"

The article contained some interesting insights. One is that although the male brain is 10 per cent bigger than the female one, the female one has 5 per cent more brain cells. It also provides empirical evidence on 'male testosterone-driven decision making'.

The author Zephania Opati quotes research by the Brand Week and Copernicus Marketing Consulting on why women excel in marketing.

The research found that women have a more collaborative and thoughtful decision making style than men.

Seek advice They were also viewed as more sensitive and caring and are more likely to seek advice from colleagues before making decisions. They were found to use influence more while men were considered more autocratic.

The research suggested that women were better than men at understanding emotional connection to brands.

The author gives an example of a mobile brand that is currently in woes for failure to see Google and Apple's encroachment.

This is because they were too focused on existing classic competition from other handset manufacturers in Europe. My conclusion is that since the brain of a woman works in a different way from that of a man, including a fair mix of both in decision making is likely to provide the best results.

One aspect that may keep women away out of boardrooms is the established old boys' network in the capital market.

Women need to penetrate this network in order to bring some lipstick diplomacy, their powerful brains and other values into our boardrooms.

The writer is the Marketing Director of SBO Research.

• Kenya