Gender-Lens Investing Strategies for 2019

Stanford Social Innovation Review Mar 21, 2019
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Gender-Lens Investing Strategies for 2019 Giving Compass

Giving Compass’ Take:

• The author explores gender-lens investing strategies that make sense in 2019 as this practice gains more momentum in the impact investing world. 

• How will gender-lens investing impact the lives of women? 

• Read about how to build a gender-lens investment strategy. 

After a decades-long outcry for data proving that gender-smart investing makes financial sense, today reams of evidence show that including women in government leads to more stable societies, educating women creates stronger communities, including women on company boards leads to better organizational performance, and access to contraceptives contributes to a stable economy.

Once viewed as a niche strategy, gender-lens investments are emerging as an important source of funding for organizations, products, and services that benefit women.

But while gender-lens investing has enormous momentum, there is more work to do, especially in structuring organizational leadership to include all women. Here are four major themes that should be at the front of gender-lens investors’ minds in 2019.

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.
    Real Impact: A Review of Morgan Simon’s Thoughts on Impact Investing

    Giving Compass Take: • The review of Real Impact by Morgan Simon says that impact investing can be a do-gooder task that will restructure the global economy and help communities in need simultaneously. • What are some of the pitfalls of impact investing? How can it go wrong? How do we improve the practice? • Learn how you can decide if impact investing is right for you. The term “impact investing” is now a decade old, and the activity it describes totals over $100 billion and growing. What’s not to love about pursuing the mission of philanthropy via the mechanisms of capitalism? Seeking profit in tandem with other good societal outcomes? Alleviating poverty while also generating income? Well, it depends on what you mean by impact investing. In her new book Real Impact, investment professional Morgan Simon sets impossibly high ambitions for impact investing, while attacking the commercial disciplines it depends on. She argues that private business has caused harm through the centuries because of its “extractive practices,” and that ineffective charity is “covering up structural economic problems.” She wants to see impact investing “completely restructure the global economy.” Simon is not only seeking a better way to help the needy and solve societal problems. She is also seeking a way to force capitalism into new forms. What follows is Simon’s playbook for an essentially socialized economy where allocating capital for the best returns is a thing of the past. Real Impact illustrates the many ways that well-intentioned efforts to help others can go wrong due to failure by the do-gooder to grasp the complexities of markets, the power of economic incentives, and the immutability of human behavior. Simon’s complete trust in the ability of investors to engineer radical global social change, despite zero examples of this ever being achieved even on a middling scale, is the book’s downfall. The blunt reality is that no human being will ever have all the information needed to successfully pull off such a feat of planning and control. Read the full article about impact investing by Marni Soupcoff at The Philanthropy Roundtable

  1. The Time Is Now According to the latest report by the gender-lens investment accelerator Catalyst at Large and investment advisor Veris Wealth Partners, assets under management with a gender-lens mandate grew 85 percent in the 12 months prior to July 2018, as global investors added more than $1 billion to a range of gender-smart strategies.
  2. Impact Investing Is Intersectional As gender-smart investing expands, we must make sure that the investing world’s growing focus on women does not leave behind women of color. For example, women and people of color receive only 0.2 percent of venture funding, according to a new report by #ProjectDiane. If we’re not conscious of this imbalance and the biases that have created it, we will continue to lock many people out of opportunities.
  3. Account for Gender in All Decision-Making To make the systemic changes we need to achieve gender equality, investors and other stakeholders must ensure that women are included in every stage of organizational decision-making.
  4.  Data Is Nothing Without Action Despite all the data showing its potential, gender-lens investing is usually a side session at investing and social impact conferences—and the attendees are mostly women.

Read the full article about gender-lens investing strategies by Emilie Cortes at Stanford Social Innovation Review

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