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 XOCO Unlimited. This preview version of XOCO’s Action Guide for Investing in the Education of Adolescent Girls provides an overview of the opportunities available for investments in girls’ education, especially in the Global South.

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.

By Alina Sorgner, Gloria Mayne, Judith Mariscal, and Urvashi Aneja. Despite the headway the world has experienced over the years in terms of a substantial increase in digital access, there are still significant challenges to overcome in ensuring women are included in the transformation to a digital society and leapfrogging productivity and social development. Efforts to increase internet adoption access through broadband plans and legislative reforms have yielded improvements in use and adoption. However, a stark gender inequality is pervasive in terms of access, ownership of digital devices, digital fluency as well as the capacity to make meaningful use of the access to technology. Even though affordability is a key source of exclusion, there are also significant socio-cultural norms that restrict access for women. This policy brief brings forward the argument that access alone is not enough, women need agency and capacity to leverage access. We thus highlight the need to make an assessment of the global gender gap and develop meaningful indicators that contribute to the design and implementation of effective policies that drive adoption. We need effective promotion of women´s digital adoption not only from the government but from the private sector and civil society to lead the digital adoption for women of best practices around the world.

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 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.

By UNICEF, GenderSmart and Volta. The analysis presented in this report by UNICEF, GenderSmart and VOLTA lays out six core investment themes and examples of investable opportunities and calls on commercial organizations and investors, with an eye on social and economic impact, to adopt bold investment approaches across these themes. This includes patient investment capital through blended and other innovative financing structures as well as concrete due diligence and impact measurements.

From Dalberg. This article makes the case for valuing women and girls' unpaid care work in the home, by recognizing, reducing and redistributing unpaid care work. The findings are derived from Dalberg's on-going work on this topic. Since 2016, Dalberg have built a database of global time use across 75+ countries, conducted a literature review of over 100 articles and reports, and interviewed over 60 experts.

From Trillium Invest. In Investing for Positive Impact on Women: Integrating Gender into Total Portfolio Activation, Trillium Invest provide a framework and guide for mission-driven investors as they consider how to put their investments to work in support of their own long-term goals to benefit women and girls. It presents concrete examples of just some of these opportunities, as well as a variety of case studies of investors, funds, and initiatives that integrate gender considerations into their investment activities.

From Veris Wealth Partners. Veris presents its fifth survey of GLI products that are both publicly available (stocks, bonds, and certificates of deposit), and explicitly support gender balance and equity.

From SPRING Accelerator. Are you an investor interested in exploring the potential of investing to benefit girls and young women in emerging markets? Perhaps you are wondering how to start, or are looking to deepen the impact towards girls and young women within your existing investments? Then this toolkit is for you.