Carlos Eduardo Lessa Brandão (IBGC - Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance, Brazil) points to links between diversity, gender and corporate governance performance.

My name is Carlos Eduardo Lessa Brandão from the Brazilian Institute of Corporate Governance.

Why Gender is important for Corporate Governance? Gender is part of diversity. And diversity is very important for the performance of groups. It includes the corporate governance environment itself: the company, society and even nature. It is a very important concept of diversity.

If you do the reporting itself, it involves transparency and accountability which are very important to build trust in groups. When you do the process of reporting you can have access to feedback — depending on how you do that process. And here is important for you to check and monitor the level of diversity in your organization. Gender is included there, and other things too. So it is very important for social groups in general.

There are some studies regarding diversity, gender and corporate governance. One study shows that there is some evidence that with women sitting on boards, the performance of the board improves. And with 3 women on board, you have much better quality in the decision making process.