In Real Estate, It Pays to Put Women on the Board, Study Shows

BY LILY KATZ

Real estate is still largely a man’s world, but companies with women on the board are the ones rewarding investors.

 Wells Fargo & Co. analysts Jeffrey Donnelly and Dori Kesten examined the gender makeup of boards of 165 U.S. real estate investment trusts from 2006 to 2017. They found that shares of REITs with a greater-than-average share of female directors outperformed REITs with all-male boards by 2.33 percentage points over five years.
 
 While the average representation of women on REIT boards rose to 15.5 percent from 8 percent in the past decade, that still trails the 22 percent average for the S&P 500, according to the study.
 
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