How to Build a Gender-Lens Investment Strategy

ImpactAlpha Mar 29, 2018
This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
Click here for more.
How to Build a Gender-Lens Investment Strategy Giving Compass

Giving Compass’ Take:

• There are social and financial motivations driving gender-lens investing. Creating clear goals, strategies, and metrics are key to succeeding in lifting women up.

• What are your priorities when it comes to investing? How can you align your existing goals, systems, and metrics to incorporate gender-lens investing? 

• Learn why gender-lens investing is financially smart. 

Gender lens investing considers investments’ social impact on women alongside financial returns. In the past several years, there has been tremendous growth in impact funds, exchange-traded funds, and mutual funds focused on gender-lens investing. Recent studies have indicated over $2 billion of assets focused on gender-lens investing.

There are opportunities to apply a gender lens at four key inflection points: when defining the mandate for gender-lens investing, developing a strategy, due diligence, and when providing operational assistance to portfolio companies.

  1. Define the mandate: The gender-lens investing movement began with a strong focus on women-led businesses. Investors applying a gender lens can support gender-equitable workplaces, companies that produce products and services that serve women and companies that work on structural issues such as reshaping rigid gender norms and addressing violence.
  2. Develop your strategy: Drivers could include gender-blind processes for recruitment and promotion, good parental leave policies, and equal pay — and will certainly vary by industry and geography.
  3. Incorporate Metrics into Due Diligence: Once these critical factors have been identified, investors can incorporate corresponding metrics into due diligence. Equal pay, for example, can be clearly measured through historical data for specific roles.
  4. Support investees’ progress: Finally, investors can advise investees or portfolio companies on how to be more gender equitable and provide them with advice and support on strengthening their business models.

Read the full article on gender-lens investing by Rachna Saxena at ImpactAlpha

Interested in learning more about Impact Investing? Other readers at Giving Compass found the following articles helpful for impact giving related to Impact Investing.

  • This article is deemed a must-read by one or more of our expert collaborators.
    Click here for more.
    The Great DIB-ate: Measurement for Development Impact Bonds

    Giving Compass' Take: • Stanford Social Innovation Review reports on the rise of development impact bonds (DIBs) as a mechanism for solving social challenges, emphasizing that they must be grounded in sensible approaches to measuring impact. • Are investors doing enough due diligence when it comes to DIBs? What data gathering practices might prove to be the most effective in this field? • Here's how DIBs make sense for youth programs. Over the past year, development impact bonds, or DIBs — international development’s newest hot trend — have generated a tremendous amount of buzz from champions and detractors alike, along with some serious money. The latest flurry of activity includes an $11 million education impact bond in India, the first development impact bond in Africa, several ambitious outcomes funds (including two aiming to raise $1 billion each), and a recent global convening full of heavy hitters. While all these efforts aim to advance the idea of tying payments to real improvements in people’s lives, they also exhibit tremendous variation—and perhaps some confusion—on what it actually means to pay for “impact.” As this nascent field rapidly develops, there is an urgent need to develop a set of shared standards around what impact means, how to measure it, and how to tie it to payments. With billions of dollars poised to flow into these instruments, the consequences of getting it wrong are massive. On one side, we have the potential to incentivize service providers to solve hard problems by ensuring that capital flows toward programs that improve lives. On the other side, we risk wasting considerable time and money on complex financial instruments that could perversely incentivize implementers and donors away from the most impactful activities. As a sector, we need to stay focused on the main prize: putting money behind programs that we are confident improve lives. Read the full article about measurement for development impact bonds by By Kate Sturla, Buddy Shah and Jeff McManus at Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Looking for a way to get involved?

Learning with others and benchmarking are key steps towards becoming an impact giver. If you are interested in giving with impact for Impact Investing, take a look at these events, galas, conferences and volunteering opportunities to connect with individuals like you.

Loading...
Learn More
Are you ready to give?

If you are interested in Impact Investing, please see these relevant Issue Funds, Charitable Organizations or Projects where you can get involved.

Loading...
Learn More

Sign in

Your personal information is confidential at Giving Compass. For more information, please visit our privacy policy. By signing up, you agree to our terms of use.