Status of Women committee  The benefits come from achieving close to gender parity.

Status of Women committee  If you had a board of all women, you would not be performing as well as if you had a diverse board of women and men.

Status of Women committee  As I said in my remarks, you can't just go and hire people off the street. You need people who understand business. You need people who understand the industry. You need people who understand corporate governance. But those people are out there. I would leave it to the boards to make that decision, but I'd put the accountability on them to achieve a certain goal.

Status of Women committee  Absolutely. One of the challenges we have on boards today is that even the men on the board don't have the requisite skills—

Status of Women committee  —to understand what the management is doing.

Status of Women committee  Obviously there are substantial benefits. In many companies, such as financial services companies, the majority of the employees are women. As we know, more than 50% of university graduates are now women, and in the next decade that will be 60%. You're seeing an entire universe of women who are able to contribute, but their abilities to move into leadership positions has been limited.

Status of Women committee  Thank you for the question. Very clearly, companies that have diverse management teams and/or diverse boards perform better from a financial perspective; they have higher earnings, higher return on capital, higher growth and earnings. They also perform better from an environmental perspective and in times of stress, for example, when a CEO resigns.

Status of Women committee  Thank you, Madam Chairman. I'd like to start by making a few remarks that mirror the written submission I made. I'm very pleased to have this opportunity. Today I'm going to share some of the research we've done at Rotman School for a book entitled Ascent, which is coming out in June, published by Wiley.