By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

New research [PDF] out of INSEAD, the world’s largest graduate business school, shows that women leaders experience less stress at work when they feel good about… being women. This finding may seem simple and obvious, but the rigorous study delves deep into identity theory around leadership and gender, with quantitative research on over 600 female leaders across the globe.

The study, “Me, a woman and a leader: Antecedents and consequences of the identity conflict of women leaders,” was written by INSEAD researchers Natalia Karelaia and Laura Guillén. They found that, especially in male dominated organizations, women leaders experience significant conflict regarding their social identities as both a leader and a woman.

Many women in the study reported spending all day conforming to an aggressive, stereotypically “male” leadership identity at work. Feeling forced to behave in a way that was inauthentic to their more traditionally “female” gender identity – warm, nurturing, cooperative – left these women unhappy at work, stressed out, and unmotivated to lead.

These women saw leadership as something the had to do, rather than something they wanted to do.

But, the research shows, this identity conflict seemed to diminish in companies that were more gender balanced at the top, middle, and entry level. In fact, working in organizations where being a woman is seen as explicitly positive left them more motivated to lead.

“By reducing identity conflict, a more positive gender identity increases the joy of leading and decreases the sense of obligation to do so,” Karelaia and Guillén write.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

Two years ago, the World Economic Forum introduced a gender quota of sorts – to raise the percentage of women at its annual event in Davos, which I called “embarrassingly low.”

In 2010, only 17 percent of attendees were women, so the WEF decided that moving forward, for every four men each company sent to Davos, they’d have to send one woman. This year, after two years of the quota system at the elite gathering, well, not much has changed. The percentage hasn’t risen at all. In 2013, only 17 percent of attendees were women.

What’s going wrong?

According to The Guardian’s Jane Martinson, many companies are sending only four men, and forfeiting their last ticket rather than send a woman. And as Quartz’s David Yanofsky wrote, “Comparing the conference’s gender bias to that of the world population–49.7% women–means that one is 66% less likely to encounter a female participant at Davos than almost anywhere else in the world.”

But in truth, the 17 percent ratio is simply business as usual. As Barnard College President Debora Spar wrote last September:

“As of 2012, women accounted for only 16 percent of partners at the country’s largest law firms and 15 percent of senior executives at Fortune 100 firms. They constituted only 10 percent of the country’s aerospace engineers, 7 percent of its Hollywood directors, and 16 percent of its congressional representatives. And they still earn, on average, only 77 cents to every man’s dollar.”

The Davos gender gap is just a representation of a larger problem – a global leadership gap that leaves fewer women in charge of a world that sorely needs them. After all, if some of the best leaders aren’t making it to the top simply because they are female, that means some sub-par leaders are taking their place simply because they are male.

Apparently, our institutions would willingly withstand underwhelming leadership rather than do the hard thing and look beyond the “think leader, think male” stereotype – and this should call into question every other lazy decision these institutions have implemented.

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

What’s one way to beat the market when it comes to alternative investments? According to new research by accounting firm Rothstein Kass, invest in women.

The new study, “Women in Alternative Investments: Building Momentum in 2013 and Beyond,” reports that hedge funds run by women outperformed the HFRX Global Hedge Fund Index through the third quarter of 2012, producing a net return of 8.95 percent compared to a 2.69 percent net return.

Camille Asaro, a Principal at Rothstein Kass who contributed to the report, said she wasn’t surprised by the data. “We did expect women to outperform, and that’s something that has been the case for the last five years.”

The research can only help make the case for supporting initiatives to bring more women into the industry – and interest in doing so seems to be growing, Asaro said. “I really believe there is more traction for women in the alternative investment industry. This research confirmed what we’ve been seeing first-hand, that there is currently more interest in investing in women-owned and managed funds. This interest does seem to be intensifying although not as quickly as some have anticipated.”

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By Melissa J. Anderson (New York City)

According to a new study by Ernst & Young, companies are more likely to hire female board members if they already have at least one woman on the board. That is – once they recognize the benefits that board diversity can bring, they tend to want more.

The study, which examined the board composition of S&P 1500 companies from 2006 to 2012, also showed that companies that had never hired a female board director weren’t likely to start anytime soon.

According to Ernst & Young, 30 percent of companies have added at least one woman director since 2006. About 60 percent of them already had at least one female director.

Karyn Twaronite, Partner and Americas Inclusiveness Officer at Ernst & Young said, “We were surprised that boards that didn’t have any women didn’t add many women, especially despite evidence that the benefits of having multiple women directors reach beyond the boardroom. For instance, a Catalyst study showed a direct cause and effect to having at least three women on boards — it resulted in more women in these companies’ executive levels.”

The study also showed that larger companies tend to have more board diversity than smaller ones. Today, about 14 percent of board directors on the S&P 1500 are female, an increase of three percentage points since 2006.

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By Jessica Titlebaum, President, Women in Listed Derivatives

The derivatives industry will come out stronger from the past year’s challenges. Dodd Frank legislation was keeping people up at night, MF Global failed, and then the industry was hit with Peregrine Financial Group. It’s enough to shake anyone in their boots, some of them even high heeled!

This was the backdrop of the first annual Women in Listed Derivatives’ WILD Symposium: Industry in Transition. Hosted by the Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago, the Symposium featured high caliber speakers like Carol Burke, the woman tasked with implementing Dodd Frank at the Federal Reserve, and Terry Savage, one of two women on the CME Group Board of Directors, who discussed how the industry was changing and how women could prepare for surfacing opportunities.

Women in Listed Derivatives, or WILD, was founded in 2009. It is managed by a group of women that work in an “old boys club” known as Chicago’s derivatives industry. Now a global community, the not-for-profit WILD organization is dedicated to helping women in the listed and over-the-counter derivatives space advance their careers, find mentors, and learn how to network effectively. This was the group’s first half-day conference.

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