The data on boardroom diversity compiled by Corporate Knights found two major public and private companies whose boards include a much higher proportion of women versus the Canadian population. And those two companies have something in common. Both Vancouver City Savings Credit Union (Vancity) and Mountain Equipment Co-op, two firms with well-established reputations for corporate social responsibility, have boards that are 67 per cent female.

The finding raises a chicken and egg question: does having more female directors make a board more socially conscious, or do socially conscious companies attract more women directors? The answer appears to be that it’s a combination of both.

Coro Strandberg, a consultant who was a director of Vancity for more than a decade, says that, in her experience, having women on a board changes a company's mentality. “I think one of the problems with boards is they group-think,” she says. “And I think women bring a diverse perspective and style of operating on a board, a way of probing and understanding issues, a way of brokering resolution of issues.”

While it’s a controversial opinion, she also suggests that women tend to be more forward-looking.

“I think they bring natural compassion to the board,” she says, “and I think they would tend to have a bit more of a multigenerational perspective. Because of their role as mothers, they naturally bring a perspective of future generations to the table.”

Whatever their gender, directors first and foremost must be individuals who possess the key skills required by a board, including integrity, sound judgment, financial knowledge and strategic thinking. But boards must also understand their customers, and Strandberg notes that “women represent a significant part of the consumer market. They have a lot of economic power in the marketplace.”

That might go partway towards explaining why two retail firms, Shoppers Drug Mart and Jean Coutu Group, are also near the top of the list of boards with a high composition of women, at 40 and 33 per cent respectively.

But the proportion of women on the vast majority of corporate boards continues to be much smaller than the proportion of women in the broader Canadian population.