From Spring Accelerator - Aimed at investors and other development practitioners, this toolkit highlights the potential of using finance to impact and empower adolescent girls and young women in emerging markets. The toolkit is based on the work of SPRING and four years of experience in running its accelerator for girls and young women impact ventures in East Africa and South Asia. This specific focus on gender and age-group in emerging markets represents a convergence of three recent movements in investment: gender lens investing, impact investing and investing in youth. As the context and background sections of this toolkit make clear, there is a wide variety of exciting investment opportunities in this space, across a range of sectors.

From ICRW - Learn how to better integrate gender into investment processes to make smarter investments that enhance returns, gender equality and women’s economic empowerment.

From Bloomberg. Advisers are adding guarantees to certain merger agreements in light of the sexual misconduct scandals that have enveloped the producer Harvey Weinstein and other high-profile businessmen -- ones that legally vouch for the behavior of a company’s leadership.

The development is a concrete example of how business is trying to adapt to the #MeToo era, at least in terms of legal liability. The move is particularly noteworthy given its source: the male-dominated world of M&A advisory where the terms of an offer can make or break a bid.

The 2X Challenge serves as one instrument in the DFI toolkit to direct capital towards women’s development. The 2X Challenge calls the G7 and other DFIs to collectively commit and mobilize $15 billion that provide women in developing country markets with improved access to leadership opportunities, quality employment, finance, enterprise support and products and services that enhance economic participation and access.

DFIs can use the 2X Challenge to direct capital towards women, pre- or post-investment by:

• Encouraging investees to collect data on women employees and consumers

• Measuring the development impact of investing with and in women, over time

• Making a business case for investing with and in women

Fulfilling one of the five criteria makes an investment 2X eligible.

From Value for Women. This Paper complements Papers #1 (“Gender Inclusion for Climate-Smart Agribusinesses: A practical framework for integrating gender in climate-smart agriculture”) and #2 (“Influencing and Advocacy for Gender-Inclusive Climate-Smart Agriculture: A guide for small and growing agribusinesses”), and aims to provide tangible reference points for businesses interested in taking a gender-inclusive approach to their CSA work. The examples showcased in this Paper are intended to inspire and support SGABs to adopt the gender-inclusive practices outlined in Papers #1 and #2. Recognising that gender, business, and CSA are mutually reinforcing, the examples presented primarily focus on business-level impacts, rather than those at the producer or environmental level (i.e. profit rather than people or planet).

From Calvert Impact Capital. This seminal paper on gender-lens investing shares practical guidance for creating a gender inclusive investment strategy, learned from evolving the authors’ own gender-lens investment approach:

• Set realistic expectations based on the type of capital you are investing. This, more than anything, practically defines the opportunities that are available to you to invest for impact and the approach you can take to incorporate gender

• Understand the tools at your disposal. The tools to incorporate gender into investment decision-making and analysis vary based on the type of capital and the level of influence and ownership that capital affords the investor

• Gender-lens investing is an art, not a science, and context matters. Gender’s role in investing is nuanced and success looks different depending on the context (e.g., market, geography, sector, etc.)

Incorporating gender into investment analysis might be the quickest route to better performing investments and a more equitable and sustainable world. There’s no one, right way to incorporate gender into your investments. It’s not rocket-science, it’s not niche. It has the potential to improve both financial performance and social impact. In short, it’s just good investing, so get started today.

By Paul Gompers and Silpa Kovvali. Researchers have struggled to establish a causal relationship between diversity and financial performance—especially at large companies, where decision rights and incentives can be murky, and the effects of any given choice can be tough to pin down. So the authors chose a “lab rat” with fewer barriers to understanding: the venture capital industry.

VC firms are fairly flat: Every investor is a decision maker, and choices have clear business consequences. Using publicly available information, researchers can see how similar or different decision makers are and compare decision quality on the basis of investments’ performance.

After examining tens of thousands of VC investments, Paul Gompers has found that diversity significantly improves financial performance on measures such as profitable investments at the individual portfolio-company level and overall fund returns. And even though associating with similar people can have social benefits for people who do so, it can lead investors and firms to leave a lot of money on the table.

In this article Gompers and Silpa Kovvali describe the research and provide recommendations for reaping the business benefits of diversity.

The Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has now completed an extensive research, engagement and outreach process to determine the potential of a menstrual health market (the market) across the Pacific Island countries.

In September 2018 the Criterion Institute, supported by DFAT and Pacific Readiness for Investment in Social Enterprise (Pacific RISE), facilitated a four-day workshop in Melbourne, Australia. The workshop brought together a diverse range of social and business actors focused on improving menstrual health management (MHM) in the Asia-Pacific region to understand and overcome inefficiencies and obstacles in the menstrual health market across the region. The workshop focused on understanding the challenges faced by local social enterprises and identifying opportunities to improve market performance, and how appropriate types of capital could increase local access to menstrual health products. Attention was also paid to the role public and private actors play in facilitating universal access to menstrual products and addressing systemic socio-cultural, educational and environmental barriers to menstrual health across the region.

The workshop brought together 43 participants from 13 countries: Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom, United States of America, and Vanuatu.

This report presents lessons learned from menstrual health actors working in the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the local context of island-based nations. The first of its kind, it should be read as a unique case-study that captures the specific menstrual health challenges faced by countries with dispersed populations across large geographic locations with limited income and commercial access. It explores how innovative investment can be a means of facilitating a new market opportunity, enabling improved access to necessary healthcare products, and support venture creation for women-led businesses.

From Nordea Markets. Companies with a more gender-balanced leadership have more stable returns. That’s the result of an analysis by Nordea Markets based on a sample of 100 Nordic blue-chip companies that examined how gender diversity affects the performance, and hence value, of large companies.

The results, reported in the February 2018 issue of Nordea On Your Mind, showed that the companies with the most gender-diverse management had 40 percent lower volatility in ROCE (return on capital employed). The companies in the study with more gender-diverse boards of directors also had significantly lower volatility in returns, although the results were most striking at the group management level.

ProjectDiane2018 is a biennial demographic study authored by digitalundivided that provides a snapshot of the state of Black Women Founders, and the startups they lead, in the United States

From InsuResilience Global Partnership. The aim of this paper is to explore the link between gender and disaster risk financing and insurance – with special focus on Climate Risk Insurance (CRI) – and potential challenges and opportunities for women; provide a stock take of existing CRI schemes that incorporate gender; and set out recommendations on how to further mainstream this topic within the Partnership.

From the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. The report projects a tremendous boost to the United States’ workforce and consumer spending when organizations take the necessary steps to advance racial equity. Led by Ani Turner, co-director of Sustainable Health Spending Strategies at Altarum, researchers analyzed data from public and private sources, including the U.S. Census, Johns Hopkins University, Georgetown University, Brandeis University and Harvard University. Their methodology included applying established models to estimate the economic impact of the disparities faced by people of color.

From Cambridge Associates. Many institutional investors have long sought to promote social equity through grant making and other philanthropic endeavors. With the field of impact investing maturing, these institutions are now increasingly seeking investment solutions to accomplish the same goal. Yet this effort raises important questions: What is social equity investing? What does it look like in practice? And how do social equity investments fit in a portfolio?

In this paper the authors review the current state of social equity in the United States, highlight eight core social equity issue areas, and discuss the lessons we’ve learned in constructing portfolios with these investments. They define social equity investing as investments to promote equal opportunity and access for all, regardless of background, but they understand that many investors have different definitions. While investors need to be mindful of risks, the authors believe that investments can be made to promote a social equity impact agenda across the portfolio.

From CFA Institute. As one chief diversity officer at a financial service company said, “How do we ensure our leaders are educated on diversity & inclusion (D&I) and are clear on the expectations on them? We ask leaders to move the needle, but we don’t give them the tools.” What can we learn from companies that have succeeded? CFA Institute set out to answer this and other questions in a series of industry workshops that formed the basis for this paper. Through a series of workshops, firms were able to openly discuss what they are doing, what’s been working, and what comes next in the field of diversity & inclusion. From these workshops, CFA Institute devised a list of 20 concepts that repeatedly came up and the recommended actions for how to use them.

From Boston Common Asset Management. As responsible investors and citizens we have long been concerned with how financial markets may exacerbate inequality and deepen injustices experienced by communities of color. By 2044, America will likely be a majority-people-of-color nation. Unfortunately, People of color continue to lag in access to education, experience higher unemployment and accumulate far less wealth than their white peers. “The growth in diversity among the populace coupled with the persistent exclusion of historically disadvantaged groups from full participation in the economic and civic life of the country form a core challenge that companies must address to remain competitive.” In this piece, Lisa Hayles explores the first of at least four interconnected dimensions of Racial Justice investing—Practices.

From ImpactAlpha. Racial equity investing isn’t about ticking a diversity box. It’s about understanding and investing to tackle social inequities in the U.S. – from education to healthcare, transportation and housing, to access to finance – that largely divide along racial lines. One approach is to deploy capital in support of investment managers, entrepreneurs, and communities of color, which face a continued capital gap. Another is to back companies with products and services that benefit racially diverse constituencies and have positive workplace cultures.

From The ImPact. This piece from The ImPact (co-authored by Suzanne Biegel) offers succinct, actionable insights for families interested in investing with a gender lens. Over a dozen interviews with gender lens investors provided wisdom for this publication about how and why families use gender as a factor of analysis in their investment decisions. Readers can use their experiences and stories to understand and seize the diverse opportunities for considering gender in investment decision-making. This report offers information for families at all starting points, ranging from families who want to use a gender lens to spot potential opportunities for market outperformance, families who want to use gender as the central focus of their investment thesis, and those who want to blend it into an existing impact strategy.

From the Kellogg Foundation. This report seeks to expand the narrative associated with advancing racial equity by adding a compelling economic argument to the social justice goal. Beyond an increase in economic output, advancing racial equity can translate into meaningful increases in consumer spending and federal, state, and local tax revenues, and decreases in social services spending and health-related costs.

From the CFA Institute. This report asks: Why is the industry stuck when it comes to diversity and inclusion (D&I)? What can be done to change it? What is working and what isn’t when it comes to recruiting, promoting, and retaining top talent? How do firms attract a diverse candidate pool and successfully recruit diverse candidates? What does an “inclusive” work culture look like? Have we moved beyond D&I as a “check the box” initiative?