Being Mindful About Language for More Equitable Outcomes
The language used by the impact investing community goes a long way to shaping what gets seen, valued, measured and funded. Is it time to evolve how we speak about gender and diversity?
As a member of the working class Indian diaspora raised in multicultural environments, I was raised to embrace the notion that we could each be our multiple identities all at once. In my case- woman, Indian, Muslim, expatriate, Canadian etc. Diversity was the norm and celebrated, such that the labels of persons of colour, minority, marginalised groups, were never really in my vernacular.
However, my frame of reference is not someone else’s lived experience. Moreover, each weave in our individual threads contributes to making up an individual journey. For instance, take away the word ‘expatriate’ from my story and maybe I wouldn’t have the privilege of even writing this today.
The Impact of Labels
Labels and language matter because otherwise we run the risk of turning the experiences of disparate groups into a monolith. Labels can have an impact on access to health, as evidenced by the current pandemic, lead to inequitable access to capital and resources - such as just 0.2% of venture capital going to women of colour - or even preclude access to basic rights of quality education, for example.
Even within each label, groups of people are not homogenous. Understanding that concepts such as race and ethnicity are social constructs, part of powerful systems that create false hierarchies of human value, is essential. As COVID-19 lays bare the plethora of systemic inequalities and the police brutality in the US which exposed deep, pervasive, toxic, and systemic racism and abuse of power around the world, it feels that now is the time to be intersectional and rethink our language as much as possible. Language, like gender, is also not a static concept and needs to evolve to reflect changing social dynamics.
Beyond binaries
In the field of gender-smart investing, which integrates gender and financial analysis while deploying capital to advance gender equality, what does it mean to unpack gender for example? As GenderSmart co-founder Suzanne Biegel says it is about using gender as a tool to analyze whether an investment is likely to succeed and whether products or services are obviously gendered or not. Yet the latest Project Sage research confirms that even among gender-smart funds there isn’t a consistent field-level definition - some people look for women as founders or in leadership, while others look across the value chain.
Criterion Institute has recently gone further in unpacking the ‘gender’ in gender lens investing, with a comprehensive gender analysis framework that explores how finance, as a system of power, can be engaged to address the marginalization and oppression of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) individuals, not just those who identify as cisgender women. This frame of finance as a system of power, as Criterion founder Joy Anderson said in an October 2019 interview with SheEO, elucidates the importance of deeper and wider gender analysis that underpins how power dynamics operate between the genders.
Context Matters
Imagine if we reflected on how the term person of colour intersects with gender finance. For context, the term “person of colour” came into being in the late 20th century as a replacement to “non-white”, reflecting the continuing racialization hierarchy. When looking at POC in a US context, disaggregating the level of venture capital that goes to people of colour is an appalling single digit figure. At the same time, this framing of POC is quite North American in context and in other communities, wording such as marginalised or excluded groups is more widely used. In emerging markets, you might refer to local fund managers and founders (as opposed to expatriate). Context matters.
So how do we become inclusive in our language? For some even the word inclusion is loaded with structural inequality i.e. who gets to be included, who decides, who is excluded, is their voice heard even though they are not at the table? This framing of diversity and inclusion (D&I) from BCG is a useful one, where ‘diversity’ is the range of human differences across gender, sexual orientation and race, while ‘inclusion’ is about unlocking the power of diversity. When D&I is assessed through this more expansive lens it has a greater chance of getting everyone together, rather than tokenising diversity.
Naming a Collective Goal
Against the backdrop of a global pandemic and wider social unrest, all the data and research is pointing to the unequal impact on women and girls, indigenous, black, vulnerable and other poor communities across the world. ender equality in particular runs the risk of falling further behind in the wake of this crisis, unless we get more intersectional across data, interventions and other policies.
COVID-19 has shaken our ‘normal’ and there is a lot of questioning around what work is essential, who is essential, where the biggest crisis pain points are being felt and how we might want to build back differently, rather than better. The truth is that unless we as a community start to see each one of us on this planet with dignity, we won’t make equitable investment decisions.
I acknowledge the deep privilege I have to even be sharing these words. The hats I get to wear, the tables I get to be at, and the lenses I apply stem from the tags that make up my identity. Just naming this is part of the journey to being more expansive in one’s language and approach. Owning one’s context is a step in helping to dismantle the prevailing systems of power, privilege and bias. While we each may have a different starting point, with the gender-smart investing community, the individuals within this community have an important role to play in working to become inclusive, intersectional and equitable in our language as we work towards a sustainable future.
Sana Kapadia is Content Lead at GenderSmart. Image by Volodymyr Hryschenko on Unsplash