From Oliver Wyman Forum - More than a fifth of major corporations have pledged to reach net-zero emissions by 2050. Yet few actively include or consider women in their climate action decisions and plans. This is a mistake. Research shows that women are the most likely change‑makers for climate in economic areas from corporate leadership to product development. But these potential contributions are generally overlooked, we discovered in interviews with more than 20 companies across a range of industries. These challenges should be linked together, especially given the similarities in their requirements for tangible impact: committed leadership, a rigorous focus on data, and continuous learning across the organization. Our conversations and research uncovered opportunities for corporations to speed up the world’s race to net zero by mainstreaming gender considerations in climate focused business initiatives — in particular, by actively considering women in three roles: Climate action leaders; Climate-lens investors; Low-carbon product influencers.

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 GIIN - Resource library of different strategies to achieve gender impact.

From Credit Suisse. The Credit Suisse Research Institute (CSRI)’s ‘Gender 3000 in 2021: Broadening the diversity discussion’ report:

• Tracks the changing gender profile of senior executives and boardrooms across global industries from a unique bottom up perspective.

• Reveals boardroom diversity continues to improve globally with an approximate average of 24% of women sitting in corporate boardrooms. The percentage of women in senior management positions (“C-suite” roles) has also improved to 20%.

• Illustrates a positive correlation between increased gender diversity in leadership positions and superior returns on capital, Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) and stock performance. The more pervasive diversity is within an organization, the stronger the relationship.

• Outlines the state of female representation in entrepreneurship. Over the past five years, the ratio of female-to male-founded start-ups is up from 0.62 to 0.73 but challenges remain for female founders.

From Hogan Lovells. This Guide is aimed at General Counsels who advise Boards on a regular basis. It looks at the legal considerations behind ethnicity pay gap reporting, in particular the data protection and employment concerns, that can become a perceived barrier to publishing these statistics.

It also seeks to debunk the legal myths that may prevent organisations from publishing their reports, and analyses the anatomy of a really powerful ethnicity pay gap report. The Guide is designed to start a crucial conversation about how to innovate in an area of policy and law that is in flux, beyond the obligations that have been in place for gender pay gap reporting since April 2017.

From Deloitte. The venture capital (VC) industry appears to be making progress in achieving greater gender, racial, and ethnic diversity. Some progress has been made in expanding the representation of women in leadership positions, particularly for investing professionals. In addition, of the VC firms surveyed, more are adopting diversity and inclusion strategies than before, and firms with these strategies report having more diverse workforces than other VC firms. However, the pace of progress has been uneven across diversity demographics—there has been little increase in the representation of Black and Hispanic employees in the overall industry and in leadership positions. At the talent management level, few of the firms surveyed conduct employee surveys to assess their progress in creating a more inclusive workplace. While the improvements indicate a positive trend, the data indicates the industry has work to do to achieve a long-term diverse workforce.

These are some of the key findings of the third edition of the VC Human Capital Survey, powered by the National Venture Capital Association (NVCA), Venture Forward, and Deloitte to assess the state of diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) in the VC industry. The survey provides a source of information that allows firms to benchmark themselves against industry practices and helps them identify innovative approaches to promote DEI.

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.

From Pitchbook. In 2019, female-founded companies in the US closed more venture deals than ever before, raking in more than $20 billion across thousands of deals—significant improvement from a decade prior, wherein just $2.5 billion was invested across just under 600 financings. However, as the latest edition of the All In report series shows, the pandemic's onset put an abrupt halt to this upward trajectory. Reviewing the latest venture data, the report finds that female-founded companies in the US have seen a disproportionate drop in capital invested relative to the country's broader venture space.

The full report unpacks this stark reversal in depth, pulling in datasets spanning exits, industry and regions for greater context and richer nuance. In addition, it features Q&As with key industry players from Microsoft for Startups and Beyond The Billion, addressing related issues such as overall representation and how diversity contributes to improved outcomes for both companies and investors.

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 Institutional Limited Partners Association (ILPA). The ILPA Diversity in Action initiative brings together limited partners and general partners who share a commitment to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in the private equity industry. The goal of the initiative is to motivate market participants to engage in the journey towards becoming more diverse and inclusive and to build momentum around the adoption of specific actions that advance DEI over time.

GPs and LPs who join the Diversity in Action initiative commit to specific actions that advance diversity and inclusion, both within their organization and the industry more broadly. Diversity in Action signatories currently undertake four essential DEI actions and at least two additional actions (from an optional set of nine). The Diversity in Action framework includes a broad range of possible actions that span talent management, investment management and industry engagement.

By Valerie M. Hudson, Donna Lee Bowen, and Perpetua Lynne Nielsen. This book is a groundbreaking demonstration that the persistent and systematic subordination of women underlies all other institutions, with wide-ranging implications for global security and development. Incorporating research findings spanning a variety of social science disciplines and comprehensive empirical data detailing the status of women around the globe, the book shows that female subordination functions almost as a curse upon nations. A society’s choice to subjugate women has significant negative consequences: worse governance, worse conflict, worse stability, worse economic performance, worse food security, worse health, worse demographic problems, worse environmental protection, and worse social progress. Yet despite the pervasive power of social and political structures that subordinate women, history—and the data—reveal possibilities for progress. The First Political Order shows that when steps are taken to reduce the hold of inequitable laws, customs, and practices, outcomes for all improve. It offers a new paradigm for understanding insecurity, instability, autocracy, and violence, explaining what the international community can do now to promote more equitable relations between men and women and, thereby, security and peace. With comprehensive empirical evidence of the wide-ranging harm of subjugating women, it is an important book for security scholars, social scientists, policy makers, historians, and advocates for women worldwide.

By Cathy Clark, Jed Emerson, Ben Thornley. This book offers precise details on what, exactly, impact investing entails, embodied in the experiences and best and proven practices of some of the world's most successful impact investors, across asset classes, geographies and areas of impact. The book discusses the parameters of impact investing in unprecedented detail and clarity, providing both context and tools to those eager to engage in the generational shift in the way finance and business is being approached in the new era of Collaborative Capitalism.

The book presents a simple thesis with clarity and conviction: "Impact investing can be done successfully. This is what success looks like, and this is what it requires." With much-needed lessons for practitioners, the authors view impact investing as a harbinger of a new, more "multilingual" (cross-sector), transparent, and accountable form of economic leadership.

From MIT D-Lab and SEED. How do we co-design partnership models where all partners — despite their differences — have a shared understanding and buy-in for the value created and captured within the partnership? The Partnership Co-design Toolkit (P.ACT) seeks to tackle this challenge and offers a disciplined, inclusive, and practical approach to co-creating better value chain partnerships.

Collaboration between impact entrepreneurs and large corporate, government, or development actors holds the promise of scaling key innovations, yet these hybrid partnerships are difficult to forge, and many often fail due to uneven foundations. This toolkit is targeted towards impact entrepreneurs, intrapreneurs, partnership brokers and facilitators, and accelerators supporting impact entrepreneurs who are initiating value chain partnerships, partnerships where organizations seek to integrate existing or create new value chains to bring these innovations to market.

Designed to maximize partnership success, P.ACT offers four unique features:

• Co-design process: A four stage co-design framework to ensure inclusive participation and continuous engagement of all partners.

• Value focus: Emphasis on defining both the value created and the value captured through the partnership. It focuses the partners' attention on generating value for their customers and beneficiaries as well as for their organizations.

• Collaborative approach: Individual self-assessment and reflection alongside collective problem solving, constructive dialogue, decision making, and action planning.

• Modular use: Enabling users to diagnose their partnership needs and helps them identify the right tools to move their partnership forward.

From Glenmede. While deeper measures of gender equity may be necessary to achieve social outcomes, do they offer the potential to achieve financial outcomes as well? This paper explores the materiality of five dimensions of gender equity: women in leadership, access to benefits, diverse supply chains, pay equity, and talent and culture. Within each dimension, we will explore the economic argument for why public companies should look beyond the women in leadership metric to ensure equitable conditions for all employees. Companies who fall short in this area may face unexpected risks, hampering long-term growth opportunities and weakening their bottom line.

From the Center for Responsible Business. This study addresses whether the presence of women at the top positively affects the environmental and social impact of a firm. It explores a potential relationship between women leaders and sustainable business practices—environmental, social and governance.

From the Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre. Research by the Bankwest Curtin Economic Centre (Australia) puts a figure on the additional worth a company can generate by getting more women into key decision-making roles, by finding a strong and convincing causal relationship between company performance and women holding an increasing share of leadership positions within ASX listed organisations.