A Road Map to the Future of Gender Lens Investing – Executive Summary
by Joy Anderson and Katherine Miles / Prepared by Criterion Institute
Gender matters. In fact, it matters all the time. Gender matters when we are investing in women-led businesses or in companies that produce goods marketed to women. It matters when we are investing in regional transportation infrastructure, or the debt of a nation, or in the future of the semiconductor industry. Gender is not only about counting women and girls and how they are represented as workers and leaders or served as consumers and stakeholders in enterprises, industries or economies. Gender is a social construction that shapes how both men and women relate to one another and the institutions around them. Given the importance of how gender operates within society, culture, and the economy, the ability to analyze it should inform how we assign value and structure investments within systems of finance. This is not standard practice in finance, therefore, the field of gender lens investing is necessary.
At its core, gender lens investing incorporates a gender analysis into financial analysis in order to get to better outcomes. Through the creation of financial products and vehicles that reflect an understanding of the gendered nature of our world, innovators within the field of gender lens investing have created a new set of investment opportunities. These opportunities resonate with individual and institutional investors who are looking to demonstrate their commitment to creating a better world for women and girls in how they deploy their capital. This is in turn generating momentum and catalyzing creative design and demonstration as well as generating new patterns of investment activity. Over the past five years, investors have deployed billions of dollars, have been committed and new investment products and vehicles are being announced with increasing frequency.
Yet, for gender lens investing to fulfill its promise of improving gender equity, it cannot only move capital to investments that have gender as part of their analysis. It also needs to demonstrate how finance can be part of a strategy of social change. We need to demonstrate that finance and investments can be tools to advance positive change around a wide range of issues, such as sex trafficking, biases in the media, the wage gap and equitable health access.
This report tells the history of the field of gender lens investing over the last five years and outlines a roadmap to the future, defining the critical areas of focus for resources and attention.
We tell that story from the perspective of Convergence, the conference hosted by Criterion Institute, which brought together leaders in the field four times between 2011 and 2014. The research for this report builds from the transcripts and documents of that conference as well as additional secondary research. This report organizes the information in order to survey the current state of the field, make sense of tensions and trends in the field and recommends directions and action by a wide variety of participants in the field: philanthropists, investors, nonprofit leaders, policymakers, entrepreneurs, activists and academics.
As a field, gender lens investing can be understood in three ways: as a set of ideas organized into common language and frameworks; as a set of activities, the supply of, demand for and measurement of investment opportunities; and as a loosely organized set of people and institutions. The report organizes the insights and conclusions within this framework, a summary of which is included.
