From Root Capital. Recognizing the impact of climate change on women and the important role of women in mitigating its effects, in 2019 Root Capital launched its first-ever climate resilience-focused Gender Equity Grants (GEGs) in Mexico and Central America. This report, prepared by Value for Women, examines the effectiveness and relative impact of this intervention. It also recommends best practices for investors, donors, and other organizations working to promote rural women’s climate resilience through agricultural enterprises.

From Value for Women (VFW). This report, written by VFW with support from the ANDE Catalyst Fund, summarizes the findings of a rapid scoping study that was conducted between October 2018 and February 2019 to capture the state-of-the-field in Latin America of impact investing with a gender lens. Through this report, VFW hopes to generate interest in the uptake of gender lens investing strategies and metrics across the impact investing ecosystem in Latin America, as well as highlight some of the work our peers in the impact investing sector are undertaking toward this end. The report culminates with recommendations that seek to provide guidance for Impact Investors and social entrepreneurship ecosystem actors on how they can begin applying a gender lens in their work.

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 the Aspen Network of Development Entrepreneurs (ANDE) and the Institute of Development Studies (IDS). The ANDE Brazil chapter and the IDS created a joint knowledge brief to share lessons and innovations from the Brazilian ecosystem on bringing a gender lens to supporting Brazilian SGBs. It focuses on four key topics to catalyse thought leadership on gender inclusion and investing in Brazil: understanding biases; recognising gender "intersects" with diversity issues; linking to investors; and attracting and retaining women in entrepreneur support programs.

From iADB. The WX Insights Report 2020: The Rise of Women Entrepreneurs summarises the profiles, needs and challenges of women entrepreneurs in STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics) in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) region.

The purpose of this report is to identify the main characteristics of women entrepreneurs in STEM fields, and compare them with their non-STEM peers across LAC.

Since the release of IDB’s WeGrow 2013, LAC has been witnessing a significant improvement in high-impact women entrepreneurship , with more women entrepreneurs creating and growing companies in STEM areas. As a matter of fact, 81% of the STEMpreneurs surveyed in this study started their businesses in the past five years.

Launched by national governments that then partner with public and private companies, the Gender Equality Seal (GES) works towards eliminating gender inequalities in the workplace, while at the same time improving the lives of all employees and their families. Increasingly, the Seal represents a company strategy that equates striving for gender equality with good business. With 1400 public and private companies in 11 countries engaged in the Gender Equality Seal — and many more expected to participate — this innovative programme has taken off in Latin America

From IDB Invest and ESADE. Globally gender lens investing has grown exponentially as a way to increase financial returns and gender equality. What is this trend about? What can Latin America and the Caribbean learn from it?

At current rates of progress, it will take 74 years to achieve gender parity in Latin America and the Caribbean, according to the World Economic Forum (WEF) Global Gender Gap report. This paper includes:

• the experience of the US, Europe and other countries in channelling over $2.2B in gender lens investing

• gaps and opportunities in Latin America and the Caribbean to attract international investors

• success stories from Mexico, Colombia, Panama and Brazil