Making Gender Visible: A Path to Systemic Inclusion

This was the opening sentence in my 2021 piece, “Making Gender Visible.” Three years later, gender-based inequity, violence, and harassment remain intransigently woven into commerce, economics, and social systems. As attempts to undo the progress of recent decades are mounting at the political level, many companies are changing course by either slowing or abandoning efforts designed to aid the transition to a more inclusive economy. The result is a persistent, enormous gender gap, with gender parity still 131 years away.^[1]

Until now, gender has not received adequate priority and has been largely confined to a single data point under workplace diversity efforts. While workplace-focused efforts that call for advancements like enhanced disclosure and board diversity are vital to supporting the infrastructure necessary to evolve toward gender equality in corporate environments, lasting change will require more comprehensive gender prioritization across corporate value chains. 

Public equity investors have a unique opportunity to motivate companies to design for inclusion and create genuinely inclusive systems within their organizations and throughout their value chains. Determined to equip investors with the tools to activate their voice, my company, Boston Common Asset Management, developed Investor Guidance for Prioritizing Gender in 2022. The guidance supplies engaged investors with critical questions and essential tactics for motivating companies to adopt gender-specific approaches using an integrated, full value chain approach.

Underpinning this approach is the understanding that a corporate strategy that prioritizes inclusive gender governance can positively impact each aspect of a company’s value chain, as detailed below:

• Workplace operations impact a company’s leaders and employees via gender representation, benefits, compensation, health, safety, and well-being.
• Supply Chain practices impact business relationships between tier-1 suppliers and beyond.
• The Product/Service Marketplace and its participants are directly and indirectly impacted by how and what a company designs, develops, and disseminates.
• Communities are directly or indirectly impacted by a company’s business and/or community-focused activities.

Since gender-driven harms broadly impact industries worldwide, Boston Common is applying its Gender-Priority approach in industry-focused engagements, starting with those we identified as having the highest risk of gender bias – pharmaceuticals, apparel, technology, and finance. Our Inclusive Finance initiative, for example, focuses on representation, gender targets, and metrics. We inquire about the degree to which companies consult with marginalized communities and customers to inform their approaches to inclusive finance, responsible lending, and product design. My colleagues, Lauren Compere and Amy Orr, are two driving forces behind this work. Lauren recently contributed to an Oxfam report on gender inequity in the food system, yet another area where women and gender-diverse people face harmful inequities despite their significant and essential role throughout the food production value chain.

In a broad range of industries, responsible corporate decision-making can mitigate exploitative supply chains, harmful marketing practices, and unsafe workplaces, all unpriced externalities justified in the name of delivering strong returns to investors. These externalities are far from being “priced in” to a company’s financials, and yet, they relentlessly persist and indeed incur societal costs when left unchecked. One needn’t look further than the recent Coronavirus pandemic to see the persistence and societal costs of gender bias.

As investors who believe in the power of active ownership to advance social change, we acknowledge our opportunity to use our collective voice on behalf of individuals forced to navigate faulty, unjust systems. We must strive to understand the obstacles women encounter across the value chain by going beyond simply counting the number of women in the workplace. Instead, we must address and shed light on the many obstacles and exploitative systems found throughout corporate value chains, like the shortcomings of social audits, and the risk of Gender-Based Violence and Harassment (GBVH) faced by women farm workers, to name just two. We believe a full value chain approach is required to systematically dismantle gender bias and motivate companies to consider gender as a critical factor in decision-making in workforce diversity efforts, supply chain partnerships, product development, marketing, and community interactions. We will continue our work toward this goal and share the outcomes of our ongoing company dialogues with you in the months ahead. 

Article by Geeta Aiyer, CFA, President & Founder, Boston Common Asset Management and Lead Portfolio Manager, Sustainable US Value. Geeta combines over 30 years of experience in finance with a passion for environmental and social justice. Under her leadership, Boston Common Asset Management has built a strong investment record and meaningfully improved the policies and practices of portfolio companies through impactful, proactive shareholder engagement. Geeta was an early innovator in environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investing and remains an influential leader today. She is the lead Portfolio Manager for Boston Common’s US Large-Cap Value Strategy.

Geeta was recently named to TIME Magazine’s inaugural TIME100 Climate list, recognizing the most innovative leaders driving business climate action. Among other awards, she was honored by Investment News as an Innovator and recognized at the CERES conference for Building Sustainability into capital markets. For her diversity advocacy, she was named one of Boston Business Journal’s Power 50 Movement Makers in 2021. In 2022, Geeta was honored with TiE Boston’s Lifetime Achievement Award, which celebrates entrepreneurs who have pushed the boundaries of what is possible. Earlier that year, she received an honorary degree from Regis College (Weston, MA), and GreenBiz named her one of 25 “badass women shaping climate action.” Before founding Boston Common, Geeta was President of Walden Asset Management and worked at US Trust Company (Boston) and Cambridge Associates.

Geeta serves on the Boards of the Natural Resources Defense Council, Inc. (NRDC) and the Interfaith Center for Corporate Responsibility (ICCR). She is co-founder and board chair of DAWN Worldwide, an NGO addressing gender-based violence. Previously, Geeta served on the boards of

the Sierra Club Foundation and YW Boston. From 2015-2017, she was on the Board of UN PRI, becoming the first US asset manager elected to serve. Geeta earned her MBA from Harvard Business School and her MA and BA (Hons) from Delhi University, India.

Footnote: [1] https://www.weforum.org/publications/global-gender-gap-report-2023/infographics-66115127a8/