From Oxfam - This paper shares Oxfam GB’s experience of developing an approach to measuring women’s empowerment over the course of five years, for use in its series of Effectiveness Reviews. Oxfam’s aim is for this to be an easy and practical guide which shares experience and lessons learned in order to support other evaluators and practitioners who seek to pin down this ‘hard-to-measure’ concept. The hope is that the reader will make use of the measurement tools presented in this paper as guiding instruments that can be adapted to their needs.

From UN Women - This new guide provides corporations and their suppliers with a deeper understanding of the barriers and challenges preventing women-owned businesses from accessing and fully participating in local and global values chains. It provides the tools and techniques for reducing or eliminating these barriers and for leveraging the vast untapped economic potential represented by women-owned businesses. For many women, entrepreneurship offers a path to economic empowerment and it is incumbent upon corporations to help create conditions that permit this.

This guide is intended to support signatories of the Women’s Empowerment Principles, which UN Women and UN Global Compact jointly promulgate, to take action on Principle 5: Implement enterprise development, supply chain and marketing practices that empower women. Corporations are well positioned to promote gender equality and empower women in their workplaces, in their communities and through their purchasing policies and practices.

From Green Climate Fund (GCF) - This manual addresses GCF’s potential to mainstream gender into climate finance, building on its mandate to support a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development. Developed with UN Women, this toolkit guides GCF partners on how to include women, girls, men, and boys from socially excluded and vulnerable communities in all aspects of climate finance.

From the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD). Today the digital transformation provides new avenues for the economic empowerment of women and can contribute to greater gender equality. The Internet, digital platforms, mobile phones and digital financial services offer “leapfrog” opportunities for all and can help bridge the divide by giving women the possibility to earn additional income, increase their employment opportunities, and access knowledge and general information. We need to seize this opportunity to foster greater gender equality in the labour market, boost economic growth and build a more inclusive, digital world.

This report explores a range of factors that underpin the digital gender divide, bolsters the evidence base for policy making and provides policy directions for consideration by all G20 governments. The report finds that hurdles to access, affordability, lack of education as well as inherent biases and sociocultural norms curtail women and girls’ ability to benefit from the opportunities offered by the digital transformation. In addition, girls’ relatively lower educational enrolment in disciplines that would allow them to perform well in a digital world – such as science, technology, engineering and mathematics, as well as information and communication technologies – coupled with women’s and girls’ more limited use of digital tools could lead to widening gaps and greater inequality.

From the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN). The Navigating Impact Project is where the GIIN, together with experts in different investment themes, identify best practices, research, and recommended metrics for each investment theme. This will make sure they are relevant, practical, and set the standard for best practice. Once these resources have gone through the IRIS+ rigorous standards development process, they are uploaded into IRIS+ and made available to a wider audience.

Through the content provided, investors, enterprises, and other stakeholders in the impact investing ecosystem can explore Impact Themes such as Energy Access, Gender, Education, Sustainable Forestry, Sustainable Water Management, and others. Each of these Impact Themes includes a series of Strategic Goals that show common impact intentions that investors and enterprises may have within that space For example, under the Impact Theme on Smallholder Agriculture, Strategic Goals include “Improved Access to Training and Information,” “Improved Farm Profitability,” and “Improved Food Security,” among others.

Each Strategic Goal includes a research-based overview of the problem and how investments can work toward solutions, an evidence map, a starter kit of metrics that are shown to indicate progress toward that strategic goal, and curated resources that can help practitioners measure and manage their impact most effectively.

From UNDP. UNDP presents updated versions of 12 training modules and issue briefs on gender dimensions of climate change covering a range of themes and sectors. These resources include a general overview and discussions on adaptation and disaster risk reduction, agriculture and food security, sustainable energy, climate finance, and REDD+ under the new development and climate change frameworks, such as the 2030 Agenda and the Paris Agreement. These knowledge products are designed to build capacity in member countries with respect to gender and climate change within the context of sustainable development.

By Dana Kanze, Laura Huang, Mark A. Conley, and E. Tory Higgins. A study of Q&A interactions between venture capitalists and entrepreneurs at the annual startup funding competition TechCrunch Disrupt New York City found that venture capitalists posed different types of questions to male versus female entrepreneurs. They tended to ask men (promotion) questions about the potential for gains, and they tended to ask women (prevention) questions about the potential for losses. The difference in questioning explains much of why female entrepreneurs received five times less funding than their male counterparts.

A second experiment finds that the relationship between Q&A orientation and funding is causal. Entrepreneurs who were asked promotion questions received twice as much funding as those who were asked prevention questions.

Both studies also revealed an actionable silver lining: If entrepreneurs reframe their responses to prevention questions, they may be able to raise more funds.

From the Diverse Asset Managers Initiative (DAMI). This guide is designed for institutional investors (trustees and staff), primarily of public, corporate, faith, and labor union pension funds, as well as foundation and university endowments, who are interested in exploring the possibilities of investing institutional assets with diverse-owned asset management firms.

According to asset managers and industry associations with which GAO spoke, minority- and women-owned (MWO) asset managers face challenges when competing for investment management opportunities with institutional investors, such as retirement plans and foundations. For example, institutional investors and their consultants often prefer to contract with large asset managers with brand recognition and with whom they are familiar. Also, small firms, including MWO firms, are often unable to meet minimum requirements set by institutional investors, such as size (assets under management) and past experience (length of track record). State, local, and private retirement plans and foundations GAO interviewed addressed these challenges in a variety of ways, such as asking their consultants to include MWO firms in their searches. Many plans also lowered their minimum threshold requirements so that the requirements were proportional to the size of the firms while maintaining the same performance requirements for all asset managers in their selection processes.

Federal retirement plans, the endowment, and the insurance program GAO reviewed invest in asset classes in which MWO asset managers have a market presence, but overall use of MWO firms varied. For example, some retirement plans either did not use any MWO firms or did not track this information. The endowment and insurance program reported using some MWO asset managers.

GAO identified four key practices institutional investors can use to increase opportunities for MWO asset managers. These practices are consistent with federal interests in increasing opportunities for MWO businesses.

• Top leadership commitment . Demonstrate commitment to increasing opportunities for MWO asset managers.

• Remove potential barriers. Review investment policies and practices to remove barriers that limit the participation of smaller, newer firms.

• Outreach. Conduct outreach to inform MWO asset managers about investment opportunities and selection processes.

• Communicate priorities and expectations. Explicitly communicate priorities and expectations about inclusive practices to investment staff and consultants and ensure those expectations are met.

Some federal entities we reviewed, such as the Federal Reserve System, have used all the practices, but others made partial, limited, or no use of the practices.

• The Federal Retirement Thrift Investment Board does not intend to use the practices in its planned mutual fund window platform.

• The Navy Exchange Service Command and Tennessee Valley Authority Retirement System used one practice, but have not used the others.

• The Army and Air Force Exchange Service has used two practices, and partially used two practices.

By using the key practices, the entities GAO reviewed could widen the pool of candidates in their asset manager searches and help ensure that they find the most qualified firms. In keeping with federal interests, the practices could also help address barriers MWO firms face and increase opportunities for them.

From Green Climate Fund (GCF). This manual addresses GCF’s potential to mainstream gender into climate finance, building on its mandate to support a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development. Developed with UN Women, this toolkit guides GCF partners on how to include women, girls, men, and boys from socially excluded and vulnerable communities in all aspects of climate finance.

From GrOW/McGill. This policy brief presents results of a CBA of the subsidized childcare project. Since information about the monetary value of benefits (mothers’ earnings and day care fees saved) is available only for the year that the project was executed, results pertain to the monetization of benefits for this period. Costs include day care fees, cash transfers and expenditures on training and material. Regarding benefits, they can be observed at the child level, the mother level and the sibling level. The monetization of benefits is generally challenging due to the limitations of available data. Thus, the authors provide a monetary value to benefits only in the case they are easily identifiable using data collected during the survey.

Key findings:

• Mothers who used subsidized childcare services experienced an increase in their earnings and free time.

• Attending day care may increase children’s future earnings and life expectancy.

• Subsidized childcare may increase school enrollment for older siblings.

• The benefits associated with providing subsidized early childcare outweigh the costs.

From GrOW/McGill. In this study, researchers tested whether access to affordable and improved-quality day care influenced women’s labor market engagement in Korogocho slum in Nairobi, through the evaluation of a randomized control trial (RCT) with three study arms. Mothers in two of the study arms were given vouchers for subsidized center- based ECC for one year. To examine whether the quality of child care centers affected women’s use of ECC services, about half of the day cares participating in the voucher program were randomly selected to receive additional provider training and materials such as mattresses, potties, toys, and hand-washing stations.

Key findings

• Mothers were eager to send their children to early child care centers.

• Mothers who received subsidized child care were 17% more likely to be employed than mothers who did not.

• Working mothers who received subsidized child care were able to work on average five fewer hours per week than those who did not, without any loss to their earnings.

• Subsidizing child care helped mothers to both find and maintain employment.

• Cost, more so than concerns over quality, is the main barrier to women accessing center-based child care.

From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Analysis by Dalberg which explores links between unpaid care work and women’s economic empowerment in LMICs.

Among the 63 economies surveyed in both this and the last report, GEM found that Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) among women increased by 10 percent, and the gender gap (ratio of women to men participating in entrepreneurship) narrowed by 5 percent. The 2016/17 GEM Women’s Report also adds a new consideration—that of women as entrepreneurial investors. While participation rates vary, the participation of women as investors suggests a strong resource foundation from which business owners may build.

From Oxfam GB. This paper shares Oxfam GB's experience of developing an approach to measuring women's empowerment over the course of five years, for use in its series of Effectiveness Reviews. Oxfam's aim is for this to be an easy and practical guide which shares experience and lessons learned in order to support other evaluators and practitioners who seek to pin down this 'hard-to-measure' concept. The hope is that the reader will make use of the measurement tools presented in this paper as guiding instruments that can be adapted to their needs.

From BNY Mellon and the United Nations Foundation. The potential economic and development gains from gender equality are vast and well-documented — and yet they are currently being bypassed. This report explores the market potential of advancing gender equality.

From UBS. This report offers actionable ways for private citizens to deploy their wealth and power towards improving gender equality.

From Calvert Impact Capital. This framework is designed to help users understand where and how they can advocate productively for gender equity—whether they are a financial advisor or fund manager, a client or an individual investor. It offers a basic approach to gender lens investing that can be tailored to a user’s unique circumstances and goals.