Companies with a woman on the board book an average return on shareholders equity of 23.3%, compared with 13.7% for firms without a woman at boardroom level, says Erasmus University researcher Mijntje Lukerath-Rovers in Monday’s Financieele Dagblad.

The relationship between having women on the board and gross margins or return on investment were not statistically significant but still indicated that companies with a greater number of top level women performed better, she told the paper.