AXA IM's Ions: Why do men talk so much in earnings calls?

US companies struggling on social diversity

Alex Ions, head of alternative data research at AXA IM Rosenberg Equities, discusses why men talk more than women in companies' earnings calls and looks at why corporates are struggling to make progress in terms of social diversity.

The myth that women talk more than men is just that - a myth - at least when it comes to corporate earnings calls. And if you are a senior executive called Jennifer or Laura, you are likely to have contributed to the increase in US female boardroom representation in the past ten years. These are just two of the insights we have gained from developing natural language processing (NLP) language models for use in our stock selection process. Companies' quarterly earning calls transcripts are among our key data sources, and we looked at these transcripts from a diversity point of view - t...