All In: A 100% Gender-Lens Portfolio Across Every Asset Class

by Equality Fund

Just over a year ago, we launched the Rock Creek Global Equality Fund (RCGE) on NASDAQ — built on a conviction we have always held: companies that are demonstrated leaders on gender equality are quality investment opportunities. Culture matters for building winning organisations.

“By delivering comparable returns with significantly lower risk and robust downside protection during market retractions, RCGE offers definitive proof that gender-lens investing is not a concessional strategy, but a resilient one.”

As of February 28, 2026, RCGE has delivered a one-year return of 23.38%, performing tightly in line with the MSCI ACWI ETF benchmark return of 23.96%. Crucially, RCGE achieved this with a 1 year annualised volatility of just 6.2% - approximately 230 basis points below the benchmark’s 8.5%. By delivering comparable returns with significantly lower risk and robust downside protection during market retractions, RCGE offers definitive proof that gender-lens investing is not a concessional strategy, but a resilient one.

This resilience is achieved because strong performance on gender metrics is a clear indicator of corporate quality, which the fund pairs with disciplined portfolio construction techniques. The fund builds an intentionally diversified portfolio of 150–250 of these highest quality companies across regions, countries, and sectors. Using Equileap’s Gender Equality Scorecard alongside additional gender-related screens, the Fund evaluates companies based on multiple factors, including gender balance in leadership, equal compensation, and work-life balance policies. This process combines rigorous gender-lens metrics with fundamental financial analysis and ethical screening.  But what makes this approach distinctive is not just the scoring — it is the engagement.

Equileap actively works with companies to improve their disclosure and reporting over time. Companies that don't publish data don't earn points. That incentive structure pushes transparency, and transparency pushes change. Better data enables better investment decisions. Investor scrutiny encourages stronger corporate practices. 

One year in, RCGE is a core allocation within our 100 per cent gender-lens-invested portfolio — proof that public equities can contribute to financial returns and meaningful progress on equality at the same time.

Beyond Public Markets

RCGE is one chapter in a longer story. When we set out to build a fully gender-lens-aligned portfolio, we often found that the institutional products we needed simply did not exist. So we built them.

We worked with a leading asset manager to develop a bespoke private debt fund, expanding our reach into asset classes where gender-lens capital has rarely reached. To guide our private equity and venture allocations, we deploy our institutional Gender-Lens Investing Toolkit — a framework ensuring our capital lands where it can maximise systemic impact.

A prime example is our investment in Cross Border Impact Ventures, a women-led venture capital fund. One of their portfolio companies, mOm Incubators, has developed portable, easy-to-clean neonatal incubators now deployed in Kenya, Gaza, Haiti, and Ukraine — the same geographies where our philanthropic grantmaking also flows. Private equity powering innovation in the exact places where our grants are also at work, exemplifying capital and philanthropy not competing, but compounding Across public equities, public bonds, private equity, and private debt, we are demonstrating that a 100% GLI multi-asset portfolio is not a theoretical exercise — it is active, high-performing, and repeatable.

Who is the Equality Fund? 

This strategy is rooted in the origins and mission of the Equality Fund. When we launched in 2019, we made a bet: that feminist movements — chronically underfunded, perpetually dependent on governments and donors — deserved something more durable.

Seeded with $300 million from the Government of Canada, we made a deliberate choice: to invest that capital with a 100% gender lens across every asset class, and to use the returns to fund feminist movements worldwide. A sustainable, independent source of capital that keeps flowing regardless of which party is in power or which crisis has captured the philanthropic imagination that year.

Five years later, we are proud of what that bet has produced. We have moved $100 million to 1,800 organisations across 100 countries — contributing $20 million to fight gender-based violence, $16 million to sexual and reproductive rights, $15 million to LGBTQI+ rights, and $13 million to crisis response. These numbers represent real women, real movements, and real change. And they are growing, because our model is designed to grow.

Shifting the Field Together

We are deeply committed to building the field alongside our peers — sharing our institutional Gender-Lens Investing Toolkit to help other market actors adopt and advance these approaches across their own portfolios.

We invite fellow investors, asset managers, pension funds, and wealth managers to partner with us. The blueprint exists, the financial returns are clear, and the power dynamics of the market are ready to be transformed.

The Equality Fund is a member of 2X Global. To learn more about our investment approach or access our Gender-Lens Investing Toolkit, visit equalityfund.ca.