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Venture capital-backed companies with female executives are more successful than those with only men in senior executive roles, a recently released study by Dow Jones utilizing data from its VentureSource database found.

The study, called, “Women At The Wheel: Do Female Executives Drive Start-Up Success?” examines the impact female executives have had on U.S. venture capital-backed companies over the past 15 years, utilizing data from over 20,000 companies comprising 167,556 executives including 11,193 females.

Highlights follow:

*1.3 percent of privately held companies have a female founder, 6.5 percent have a female CEO, and 20 percent have one or more female "C-level" executives.

*In the four largest sectors of venture-capital backed companies – IT, healthcare, consumer services, and business and financial services – the median proportion of female executives is higher in successful than in unsuccessful companies.

*The most common positions held by female executives were in sales and marketing, accounting for 27 percent of the total population sample.

*The overall median proportion of female executives is 7.1 percent at successful companies and 3.1 percent at unsuccessful companies, "demonstrating the value that having more females can potentially bring to a management team."

*A company’s odds for success increase with more female executives at the VP and director levels; and

*For start-ups with five or more females, 61 percent were successful and only 39 percent failed.

The study defines success as companies that have exited through a public offering, are in the IPO registration process, are privately held and consistently profitable, or have been acquired for an amount greater than its total venture investment.

If female executives are so good for a company's bottom line, then why aren't there more of them?

“An investor is more likely to back a company when it’s run by someone who fits the typical entrepreneur profile, i.e., a young, male computer scientist who’s graduated from Stanford and worked at a hot company like Google or Facebook,” noted The Wall Street Journal, paraphrasing Azure Capital Partners general manager Cameron Lester referring to bias in the tech industry.

Nevertheless, the third quarter data on venture capital funds raised reported by Dow Jones last week also and based on research by Thomson Reuters and the American Venture Capital Association, shows that a woman-only company, San Francisco’s Forerunner, brought in more funding than any other venture capital company for the quarter at $43 million.

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Women Executives Make Venture-Backed Companies More Successful: Study