There are many suggestions in politics and policy. We should do this, or that, if we do the outcome will be this benefit or that t’other. The thing is the world’s a complex place with many different moving parts. We never really find out the effects of a policy until it has been implemented. For only by something actually working through the system do we see those full effects.

Women now account for a majority of independent directors at Britain’s largest public companies, research has found.

The biggest 150 groups listed on the stock market now employ 442 female non-executive directors, compared with 422 men, a report from Spencer Stuart, a headhunting firm, shows.

How excellent.

For we were told, nay insisted at, that gender diversity in the management of companies would mean that companies were better run. So much so that some countries - Norway comes to mind - insisted by law that it must happen. Others have fiddled with listing rules and so on.

Again, excellent. But now comes the interesting part. Has it worked? No, not has the impulsion worked, but has the act itself worked? Are British companies now better run than they were before the gender diversity arrived?

No, not is the world fairer now that the economic liberation of women, that devoutly to be wished event, has matured. But has that claimed and insisted upon effect of companies being better run happened as a result?

Only by examining this can we find out whether those original assertions were true. Companies would do better with gender diversity. Now we have that gender diversity has the predicted company performance arrived as well?

Do note that this is actually nothing at all to do with gender or diversity at all, it’s to do with science. The prediction was, the event has happened, did reality conform to the prediction? If not reality wins, not the prediction. Which is why the management scientists, the advocates of equal outcomes along gender lines, need to be asked to prove their contention.

Has your prediction come true? If not, why not? How has your hypothesis changed if it didn’t? The reason being that if they’re not studying all of this, testing the hypothesis against the evidence and results of the experiment, then they’re not doing science, are they? Which is what they claimed they were doing so we should hold them to it.

Are British companies now better run, Y/N? If yes then excellent but prove it. If no then why is it being forced?