Diversity - More Talk than Walk

A few days back I read with total astonishment a news item about a study by a leading UK University that tries to establish that companies with more female Board members have lower stock market valuations. I thought, how ridiculous can this get?
I have been working on an article about diversity in senior corporate management for a while now. The facts that I find are immensely interesting. A large number of companies worldwide talk about diversity being a major focus. But the average representation of women on Boards is around 20% in the US, 10% in Europe and 5% in India. More importantly, in most cases these are independent and non-executive Directors (only 3 of the 15 large US companies in my sample have Executive women Directors on their Boards).
I then looked at the composition of Management Committees and that is where this gets more bizarre. A large number of major global companies have no women on their Executive Committees and the overall average is well below 10%. I would not like to name these companies , but the information is readily available on their web sites.
We all say that Governance is about setting the tone at the top, and walking the talk. But when it comes to diversity Corporates seem to have a severe problem of cold feet while walking all that masculine talk. To blame women Directors for stock market valuations in a situation where they have not been given a fair opportunity to Govern is grossly unjust. I thought the British were known for their chivalry!