“Investing in women is smart economics, and investing in girls, catching them upstream, is even smarter”. Ngozi Okonjo-Iweala, the first-ever female and the first-ever African Director General of the World Trade Organisation, echoes a statement that we at St Helen’s could not agree more with.
It has been a true pleasure to reignite Economics, Business and Enterprise throughout the school this year; from our Lower Sixth-led Year 7 Business Club and the House Investor Challenge, through to advanced econometrics seminars and participating in the Wharton Global Investment Challenge, the enthusiasm, passion and ability HelKats have shown has been nothing short of outstanding. I must not forget being Key Stage 4 National Tycoon Champions, either – even Dragon Peter Jones recognises the entrepreneurial spirit and potential of our young women.
Yet the rest of the world, seemingly, does not. Research continues to demonstrate the paradox that, despite female contributions and leadership leading to increased success by many metrics, women continue to be underrepresented in them. Research shows that of the 2024 S&P100 companies (the 100 largest publicly listed firms in America by market capitalisation), only nine had female CEOs. Perhaps more concerningly, of the 1553 executives in total, only 29% were female, with 91% of these firms having more male than female executives (Christianson et al., 2024). This is despite the fact that in the two years following the appointment of a new CEO, the stock price for companies that appointed women outperformed those that appointed men by an average of 20%. The report, appropriately entitled ‘When Women Lead, Firms Win’, also confirmed that “Female CFOs drove more value appreciation, better defended profitability moats, and delivered excess risk-adjusted returns for their firms” (S&P Global, 2019).
If that was not conclusive enough, research using UK firm data from the Universities of Glasgow and Leicester found that companies with over 30% female executives were more likely to outperform less diverse firms, supporting broader findings from McKinsey that gender-diverse firms are 25% more likely to achieve above-average profitability (McKinsey & Company, 2020). The correlation extends to startups, too: a landmark study by Boston Consulting Group found that for every dollar of funding, startups founded by women generated 78 cents in revenue, while male-founded startups generated only 31 cents (Boston Consulting Group, 2018). That is a significantly superior return on investment!
Why, then, is there such a disconnect? Harvard Business School finds that women lack confidence in their ability to compete in fields that men are stereotypically believed to perform more strongly in. Even when they have talent and are told they are high achievers, they are more likely than men to shrug off the praise and lowball their own abilities (Gerdeman, 2019). Within this article, Harvard Business School’s Piramal Associate Professor of Business Administration, Katherine Coffman, goes on to say that “This weak self-confidence may hold some women back as they count themselves out of pursuing prestigious roles in professions they believe they won’t excel in, despite having the skills to succeed”. Women into Studying Economics (WiSE) research finds concurring evidence, coming to the disappointing conclusion that girls do not associate themselves with the features of an economist (Hughes, Orsi and Scheffel, 2025).
We seemingly find ourselves at a worrying juncture. Women make excellent economists and businesspeople yet are deterred from becoming them as they view them as male-dominated professions.
The clear solution would be to have a higher number of female role models for them to look up to, but this will not happen due to the initial problem. It is a chicken-and-egg conundrum which is still persisting: boys outnumber girls in economics at school and university by two-to-one, and only 29.4% of A level economists are female (Royal Economic Society, 2025).
As a girls-only school, we at St Helen’s are in the best position to tackle this. I refer you to Senior Deputy Head John Hunt’s SHSK Thinks article ‘The enduring value of single-sex education for girls’, where he finds that research consistently shows girls in single sex education have higher self-worth and are more likely to take and flourish in subjects traditionally dominated by boys.
Girls’ schools create a space where girls are not limited by societal expectations or stereotypes. They amplify broader opportunities for them to fully embrace their talents and skills, pushing beyond traditionally prescribed gender roles.
I see these findings in our school every day in so many ways. In just this last week:
- Students have met with me to discuss their Oxbridge economics aspirations, discussing how they could use a lecture by Robert Shiller, or Markowitz’s seminal ‘Portfolio Selection’ paper to enhance their UCAS statements.
- Our Tycoon teams completed filming their business evaluation records, confirming profit and loss balance sheets, and organising bank transfers of profits to charity.
- We received outstanding feedback from the Girls Are Investors Challenge regarding our team’s stock analysis of Next PLC, which highlighted a ‘strong grasp of Next’s Total Platform strategy and oligopolistic position’.
- I critiqued an essay set to be submitted to the prestigious John Locke Competition, entitled ‘should we fear a cashless society’
As I alluded to at the beginning of this piece, our girls are extraordinary, and it is our mission to provide them with the opportunities and confidence to fulfil their considerable potential.
We believe that our single-sex education provides the best foundation to do exactly that, perhaps no more so prevalently than in the area of economics and business.
I look forward to continuing the rollout of our academic programme next year, with Lower Sixth Business being introduced as well as the very exciting and bespoke Global Economics and Finance HPQ for Year 10. As for our exploits beyond the classroom, the sky is the limit – being national champions is a high bar but, knowing our HelKats, is something they will certainly seek to raise even further.
Sources:
- Christianson, L., Handcock, T., McShane, M. and Pye, H. (2024) Gender diversity in the C-suite: Women’s representation in the 2024 S&P 100. Russell Reynolds Associates. Available at: https://www.russellreynolds.com/en/insights/articles/gender-diversity-in-the-c-suite-women-representation-in-the-2024-sp-100 (Accessed: 15 May 2026).
- S&P Global (2019) When women lead, firms win. Available at: https://www.spglobal.com/content/dam/spglobal/corporate/en/images/general/special-editorial/whenwomenlead.pdf (Accessed: 15 May 2026)
- McKinsey & Company (2020) Diversity wins: How inclusion matters. Available at: https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters (Accessed: 15 May 2026).
- Boston Consulting Group (2018) Why women-owned startups are a better bet. Available at: https://www.bcg.com/publications/2018/why-women-owned-startups-are-better-bet (Accessed: 15 May 2026).
- Gerdeman, D. (2019) How gender stereotypes kill a woman’s self-confidence. Harvard Business School Working Knowledge, 25 February. Available at: https://www.library.hbs.edu/working-knowledge/how-gender-stereotypes-less-than-br-greater-than-kill-a-woman-s-less-than-br-greater-than-self-confidence (Accessed: 15 May 2026)
- Hughes, A., Orsi, R. and Scheffel, J. (2025) Women into Studying Economics (WiSE): Research findings. Presentation at Developments in Economics Education Conference (DEE), Economics Network. Available at: https://www.economicsnetwork.ac.uk/dee2025/presentations/WiSE_Hughes_Orsi_Scheffel.pptx (Accessed: 15 May 2026).
- Royal Economic Society (2025) Tackling the gender gap in who studies economics in the UK. Available at: https://res.org.uk/wp-content/uploads/2025/04/Tackling-the-Gender-Gap-full-report.pdf (Accessed: 15 May 2026).
