What is gender-smart investing?
Gender-smart investing is growing across the investment space, spanning private equity, venture capital, and debt. Billions of dollars are held in assets under management, in both private and public capital markets, and the opportunities to mobilize capital and invest to close gender gaps are promising and growing.
Evidence shows that gender-smart investment strategies can help grow a company’s competitiveness, solidify its supply base, improve its human capital, and help build an overall enabling business environment. By considering the full scope of the business case, companies can unlock opportunities for increased profit, growth, and innovation.
Gender-smart investing is defined as an investment strategy that seeks to intentionally and measurably use capital to address gender disparities and better inform investment decisions. Gender as a factor of analysis can highlight opportunities and reveal risks that can strengthen investment decision-making to achieve greater financial and social outcomes. Fund managers can assess and invest in companies across different gender-smart strategies, including:
Companies that are:
- Owned by women and/or with women represented in leadership
- Committed to a gender-diverse and equitable workforce
- Committed to a gender-inclusive value chain
- Committed to offering and designing products or services that consider the distinct needs of women as a consumer segment
- Committed to ensuring their operations do no harm to women in the community
Fund managers can also apply gender-smart approaches to their own firms, by strengthening the gender diversity of their workforce and investment teams. Gender diverse teams are more likely to source gender-diverse companies and are better equipped to manage gender-diverse portfolios. Gender-smart strategies across the firm and investments decision-making therefore go hand-in-hand.
2X Challenge
Central to BII’s approach to gender-smart investing is the 2X Challenge, an industry initiative to mobilise capital to advance women as entrepreneurs, business leaders, employees, and consumers of products and services that enhance their economic participation. This toolkit incorporates the 2X criteria and provides guidance on how to implement 2X across the investment process.
