I'm not sure what the article is suggesting as the reason for the increase in revenue. It seems from comments on here that people are implying that women are simply more productive when given an opportunity where they usually would be denied one.
This has been documented in the U.S. and is pretty core to advertising agencies today who have a goal of generating revenue from minority groups: you need to hire the minority groups into your companies because people tend not to buy where they cannot work (DBWYCW, or "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" is a popular acronym in the early 20th century from the United States). Don't read this the wrong way as "they only use minority groups to generate revenue," this is a marketing goal to do business with minority groups (it's not a bad or "evil" thing).
Revenue increases when you do this. There's a correlation there, but I really doubt that the cause is a supposed increase in productivity simply by giving people an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have had. I think the key indicator is to look at the media and see if these people have boycotted against companies who refuse to hire members of their group (women and African Americans were the two major groups during the Great Depression who practiced this).
It was also suggested that women for example are cheaper, although if you have a company doing programming (just a random example) and you're hiring women for secretary jobs (another example), your revenues are going to be discounted by the fact that you have less programmers. I'm not sure what type of jobs they're filling, but I'm a bit skeptic about this although it at least sounds intuitive.
> I'm not sure what the article is suggesting as the reason for the increase in revenue.
The typical economic argument is a variation on the general principle that when other people are making irrational decisions (e.g. not hiring the best candidate because of their gender), you can do better / take advantage of them.
I think that the article was implying that it in some countries it is easier to hire better (more qualified and possibly more talented) women than men. Eg - in Korea there are a large number of women with advanced university degrees in relevant fields who have more trouble than men finding work.
The article also said the researchers were speculating that women made better decisions because they were traditionally in charge of household spending and therefor understood the consumer better.
This has been documented in the U.S. and is pretty core to advertising agencies today who have a goal of generating revenue from minority groups: you need to hire the minority groups into your companies because people tend not to buy where they cannot work (DBWYCW, or "Don't Buy Where You Can't Work" is a popular acronym in the early 20th century from the United States). Don't read this the wrong way as "they only use minority groups to generate revenue," this is a marketing goal to do business with minority groups (it's not a bad or "evil" thing).
Revenue increases when you do this. There's a correlation there, but I really doubt that the cause is a supposed increase in productivity simply by giving people an opportunity they otherwise wouldn't have had. I think the key indicator is to look at the media and see if these people have boycotted against companies who refuse to hire members of their group (women and African Americans were the two major groups during the Great Depression who practiced this).
It was also suggested that women for example are cheaper, although if you have a company doing programming (just a random example) and you're hiring women for secretary jobs (another example), your revenues are going to be discounted by the fact that you have less programmers. I'm not sure what type of jobs they're filling, but I'm a bit skeptic about this although it at least sounds intuitive.