The number of Indian companies that have at least one woman on the board has witnessed a rise of 16 percent over the last six years, a survey shows.

Women's presence in board rooms has increased to 46.5 percent in 2011 from 30.4 percent in 2005 -- registering a rise of 16 percent, according to a Credit Suisse research report.

In emerging Asia, barring Philippines, all the countries have witnessed a rise in womens' presence on boardroom.

In 2011, 80 percent of companies in Thailand had at least one woman on the board, followed by China and India with 50 percent and 46.5 percent respectively.

Till the end of 2011, all most all firms in New Zealand had women representation. In Australia, that percentage stood at 88.2 percent and for Hong Kong it was 51.6 percent.

The survey further showed gender diversity is rewarded in the stock market with companies having female board representation outperforming those with no women on their boards in terms of share price performance over the last six years.

The report, which analysed the performance of 2,360 companies globally over the last six years, said in case of large-cap stocks, whose market cap is greater than USD 10 billion, the companies with women board members outperformed those without women by as much as 26 percent.

There was, however, little difference in the performance of both sets of companies during the 2005?07 period -- before the economic crisis.

The share price performance of the companies with women on the board picked up pace with the onset of the bear market in the second half of 2008 and has been strong since then, as concerns over the global growth environment have continued to weigh on market sentiment, Credit Suisse said.

"That stocks with a greater degree of gender diversification appear to be relatively defensive in nature; and the outperformance of stocks with women on the board may not continue if the world shifts back towards a more stable macro environment," the report said.

Credit Suisse listed some of the key reasons of this outperformance, including perception of being a "better" company, greater diversity leading to better average performance and access to wider talent pool.

The study also said companies with women board members had the following four traits in common -- higher ROE (return on equity), lower gearing, higher price/book value multiples and better average growth. PTI