Companies looking for better financial returns should consider afemale CFO.

Within the first 24 months of appointing female CFOs, companiessaw, on average, a 6 percent increase in profits and an 8 percentbetter stock return compared with performance under their malepredecessors. These women brought in $1.8 trillion of additionalcumulative profits, according to a study by S&P Global MarketIntelligence. The researchers looked at 6,000 companies on theRussell 3000 over the last 17 years.

One of the reasons female CFOs may be outperforming their malepeers is because they're held to a higher standard, said DanielSandberg, senior director of quantitative research at S&PGlobal and the author of the report.

"The bar is a little bit higher for females," he said. "Theresult is that the male group that is a contender for an executiveposition is a little overfished and the female contingent isunder-utilized." Men outnumber women in the CFO job by about 6.5 to1, the study found.

Investors including BlackRock and S&P Global have demandedmore gender parity on corporate boards. Women make up half of theworkforce but only control about 5 percent of the CEO jobs at thebiggest companies and a quarter of board seats.

Companies that hired a woman as CFO had about twice as manyfemale directors. After hiring a female CEO, the board tended toincrease in diversity the two years after that, too, Sandbergsaid.

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