Motley Fool Guardedly Embraces Diversity-Oriented Index - Building Gender Balanced Business

• The Motley Fool has discovered Pax World and KLD’s new Gender Investment Index, calling it “a shortcut to finding promising investment candidates”.

• But while it noted the much-documented connection between diversity and profitability, the advisory site warns against glib investing simply on the basis of the gender of the C-suite.

• Among its concerns is that a number of companies have relatively high gender diversity but not a lot of support from its own members-rated index. (Specifically, it noted that a third of The New York Times Co.‘s directors are female — not a good stock to own these days.)

• That said, many diverse companies receive five-star ratings from the site, and The Motley Fool guardedly urges interested investors to expect the arrival of index mutual funds or exchange-traded funds that will be based on the GII, the North America Women Investment Index and other gender diversity-oriented benchmarks.

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