From United Nations - Just as women and men have unequal access to rights, resources and opportunities, they relate to and interact with the natural environment in different ways, face differing vulnerabilities and impacts, and have unique adaptive capacity related to climate change, disasters and use of natural resources. The nexus between gender and environment has been of interest for decades, with the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development providing renewed impetus to the discussion. The Agenda calls for a better and sustainable future for all, making it implicit development cannot progress without addressing inequality, discrimination and exclusion affecting women and men in all spheres, including in relation to the environment. However, the links between gender and environment are not well understood and gaps in data availability impede progress assessment. Regional level follow-up and review form an integral part of the overall accountability framework for the 2030 Agenda.

This paper provides an overview of recent initiatives to measure the gender-environment nexus, identifies priorities and takes stock of related data and capacity gaps in the Asia-Pacific region. The paper puts forward a proposal for a Gender-Environment Indicator Set in Asia and the Pacific, which includes indicators from the global Sustainable Development Goals framework and beyond, capturing issues of particular relevance for the gender-environment nexus in the region.

From Business Fights Poverty - GBV affects employees physical and mental health and well-being, leading to stress, anxiety, loss of self-esteem and motivation. Often women are forced to leave their jobs. It contributes to the gender pay gap and seriously affects women’s opportunities for advancement and career progression. Women usually bear the brunt of GBV, although others are at risk, including men and members of the LGBTQI community.

The costs of GBV are high, with estimates totalling $1.5 trillion, the equivalent of 2% of global GDP. The #MeToo movement has shown there is an unprecedented demand for change, including from employees and some business leaders across the world. Companies are beginning to innovate to tackle GBV. More firms must now follow.

Yet, many companies remain unclear on how to address the problem. That’s why we agreed to partner to better understand how businesses can most effectively address GBV. The Toolkit includes a 5-step framework to help companies comprehensively tackle violence and harassment at work: 1. PREVENT violence and harassment by identifying potential risks; 2. COMMIT to gender equality and diversity across the workplace; 3. PROTECT employees with supportive policies and procedures; 4. COLLABORATE AND CAMPAIGN beyond the immediate workplace; 5. BE ACCOUNTABLE and monitor action.

From Oxfam & Unilever - There is growing evidence that business leaders and managers understand that the unequal and heavy share of unpaid care and domestic work done by women and girls is an issue which matters to the effective (on-going) operations of their firms. Some companies have already taken practical steps to address the issue by supporting employees along their value chain, for example with workplace policies that enable care responsibilities to be met, and by innovating with products and services that meet the evolving needs of consumer family and household care, so simultaneously creating business value.

This Oxfam/Unilever Business Briefing shares complementary learning and insights gleaned from working on unpaid care and domestic work with communities and consumers around the world, and with businesses and brands to share emerging good practice and evidence.

From Duke University. This program took place March 11-13, 2019 and September 9-11, 2019 at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. This 3-day intensive course is designed to help you navigate the emerging world of gender smart investing so that you can develop tangible strategies and practice to more easily and quickly integrate gender smart investing as part of an overall investing practice. Two of the top globally recognized pioneers in gender lens and impact investing (Suzanne Biegel, Catalyst at Large and GenderSmart Investing, and Cathy Clark, CASE i3 Initiative on Impact Investing at Duke University) will lead the training, sharing their insights and working with you on the key practices of gender lens investing.

From the Government of Canada. We, the Gender Equality Advisory Council, know that everyone benefits when girls and women are safe, healthy, educated, heard, and empowered to make decisions about their own lives. But gender inequality persists in every society, and progress for girls and women remains too slow, uneven, and subject to reversal. Today, G7 leaders have a unique opportunity to respond to the growing movements of girls and women raising their voices around the world with concrete commitments, new investments and measurable targets to advance gender equality. We call on G7 leaders to adopt and implement the recommendations in our full report.

From the Government of Canada. In 2013, the Government of Canada announced the Venture Capital Action Plan (VCAP). It is a market oriented approach to put Canada's VC industry on the path to sustainability, make it more globally competitive, and increase the availability of financing for innovative Canadian firms.

Under VCAP, the Government is deploying $390 million in new capital. In particular, VCAP has made available:

• $340 million to establish and recapitalize four large scale private sector-led funds of funds in partnership with institutional and corporate strategic investors, as well as interested provinces; and

• $50 million in four existing high-performing VC funds in Canada.

The four VCAP funds-of-funds attracted significant investments from a diverse set of investors that included pension funds, high-net-worth individuals, corporations, banks, and the governments of Ontario and Quebec. Including the federal government investment, the four funds-of-funds raised $1.356 billion. Of that, $904 million came from private sector investors.

From the International Finance Corporation (IFC). This study explores the link between financial returns and gender diversity; the lack of women in the industry; and steps needed to achieve gender balance. One of the key findings of the report is that private equity and venture capital funds with gender-balanced senior investment teams generated 10 percent to 20 percent higher returns compared with funds that have a majority of male or female leaders.

The report draws on gender diversity and performance data from more than 700 funds and 500 portfolio companies; survey results from over 500 fund managers and institutional investors; interviews with more than 50 investors and gender diversity experts; and case studies of more than 10 private equity and venture capital funds and institutional investors that are addressing the gender-imbalance in their own work. The report also gathers recommendations for fund managers and institutional investors to help move the industry towards gender balance.

From Power Africa. Women represent half of the world’s employment potential, yet they make up only 32 percent of the renewable energy sector workforce worldwide. In Africa’s off-grid energy sector, this discrepancy is especially acute, and problematic, as companies race to meet the workforce needs of a rapidly growing sector. PEG Africa (PEG) is a fast-growing, 400+ person company that provides solar-powered electricity solutions, called solar home systems (SHS), to customers in rural and remote parts of West Africa where the electricity grid does not reach. Small off-grid companies in Africa, such as PEG, must tackle an array of business-related challenges, and gender equality and women’s empowerment are not often prioritized. However, integrating gender-inclusive practices can both benefit business performance and increase social impact. Power Africa supports projects, programs and policies that strive to reduce gender inequalities and promote the effective engagement of both men and women in the energy sector. As part of its ongoing businessrelated support to PEG, Power Africa identified the opportunity to help the company implement strategic measures to increase internal gender equality and strengthen women’s economic opportunities.

By Caroline Criado-Perez. This book exposes the gender data gap - a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women's lives. Criado-Perez brings together an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women.

By Iris Bohnet, Siri Chilazi, Anisha Asundi and Lili Gil Valletta. Blind auditions, where musicians perform behind a curtain, helped increase the fraction of female musicians in the major US symphony orchestras from about 5 per cent in the 1970s to almost 40 per cent today. When orchestra directors couldn’t see who was playing, they based their selection decisions on the quality of the performance, rather than the personal qualities of the performer. An ingenious design intervention, the curtain and the accompanying research remind us that good people interested in maximising the quality of their product – such as orchestra directors seeking the best-sounding music – fall prey to bias.

In the world of early-stage investing, what venture capitalists (VCs) arguably care most about is the return on their investment. But they fall short of creating a level playing field for the most brilliant investing minds. Much like orchestras 50 years ago, US venture capital today is dominated by men – approximately 90 per cent of VC investors are men and roughly 88 per cent of venture dollars go to all-male founding teams. These venture capitalists have never had the benefit of the curtain to come face-to-face with how their biases affect their decision-making. They still believe in the power of meritocracy.

The case for gender equality has never been stronger—the ethical case as well as the investment and economic cases. Progress, however, remains slow and somewhat patchy, for the same reasons that efforts to tackle other forms of inequality are measured by the turtle’s pace rather than the gazelle’s: The power elite almost never give up ground without a fight. But that’s turning into a losing, if protracted, battle.

By Julie Gorte, PhD, Investments & Wealth Institute

From the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. There exists a wide tapestry of Black-owned businesses and their owners in the United States — with different countries of origin, focused on different goals, and with different needs — spreading from coast to coast. This report begins to describe those segments and launches the discussion on how to tailor appropriate supports.

From PNAS. Two Stanford researchers find evidence of racial bias in the investment decisions of asset allocators, who manage money for governments, universities, charities, foundations, and companies. This bias could contribute to stark racial disparities in institutional investing. In general, asset allocators have trouble gauging the competence of racially diverse teams. At stronger performance levels, asset allocators rate White-led funds more favourably than they do Black-led funds. At weaker performance levels, asset allocators actually prefer Black-led teams to White-led teams. However, asset allocators are unlikely to invest in weaker funds, diverse or otherwise. These results suggest that beyond racial disparities in the pipeline, there are additional systemic racial disparities in how investors evaluate funds and allocate money.

From the World Bank Group’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab and the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice. This report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions.

From the Knight Foundation. This report captures insights from a new study about the state of diversity in the U.S. asset management industry. Professor Josh Lerner (Harvard Business School) and Bella Research Group led the research, building on a similar study published in May 2017. While numerous studies have documented the lack of diversity among asset managers and asset management firm employees, the current research contributes a new perspective by analyzing the diversity of ownership of asset management firms as well as any performance differences between diverse-owned and non-diverse owned asset mangers.

From Confluence Philanthrophy. “It’s About Time: A Call to Advance Racial Equity in the Investment Industry” shares what Confluence Philanthropy heard from diverse investment managers in a yearlong listening journey. That exploration culminated in a racial equity track with the appropriate theme of Truth and Transparency at Confluence Philanthropy’s 9 th Annual Practitioners Gathering in March 2019. This report also recommends ways investors can begin embracing racial equity in the investment process. In addition, it invites you to join in Confluence Philanthropy’s commitment to welcome, honor, and uphold the very premise of diversity–a core component of any well-balanced investment portfolio.

From Mission Investors Exchange. On February 26, 2012, a seventeen-year-old Black teenager named Trayvon Martin was shot and killed in Sanford, Florida, by George Zimmerman. Martin’s death ignited a national debate about racism and justice. It was on the nightly news and in the editorial pages. We heard from legal and criminal justice experts, historians, artists, Martin’s parents, and President Obama. And, across the country, people were having their own conversations. They were having them at dinner tables and at real and metaphorical water coolers. They were having them on social media and in the streets as a protest movement took hold.

At Living Cities, a grantmaker and investor dedicated to improving the lives of low-income people and the cities where they live, we were having them, too. The days following the Zimmerman verdict were tense at our office, as staff members found themselves in reflective and sometimes emotional conversations about Martin’s death, Zimmerman’s acquittal, and the pervasiveness of racism in America. Several staff members felt that a robust and collective interrogation of the impact of racial inequity on cities was noticeably absent— and also not encouraged— in Living Cities’ work. How was it possible, we asked ourselves, to achieve our mission without intentionally addressing the intersections between poverty and race?

These conversations eventually set us on a course to radically reconfigure the way the organization works around race. Along that road, Living Cities has redefined our mission and identity as an organization, while also surfacing what it takes for grantmakers, nonprofits, and impact investors to center racial equity in practice. This article contains key lessons we have learned so far.

From Pensions and Investments. It's not everyday that an interdisciplinary team of Stanford University professors and researchers in the fields of finance and social psychology combine forces with industry practitioners to undertake pioneering research that illuminates deep-seeded, systematic bias in asset allocation due to race. The process of doing this research was as unique as the findings themselves. This study, "Race Influences Professional Investors' Financial Judgments," in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, examines how asset allocators evaluate teams of white-led and black-led fund managers at stronger and weaker performance levels.

From Confluence Philanthropy. Many foundations are committed to social justice – yet they continue to rely on a “business-as-usual” approach in their investment practices. Maintaining the status quo is often counterproductive as it produces some of the same barriers that mission-focused organizations are attempting to tackle through grantmaking.

From Promundo. State of the World’s Fathers is a globally recognized, biennial report and advocacy platform aiming to change power structures, policies, and social norms around care work and to advance gender equality.

The third State of the World’s Fathers report reveals new research on men’s caregiving from 11 countries, with additional cross-country analysis of data from over 30 countries. It calls for men’s uptake of their full share of the world’s childcare and domestic work – across all societies and relationships – to advance gender equality.