From the Thompson Reuters Foundation. ESG investing is plagued by many challenges and misperceptions about why social issues – such as a company’s labour practices or community relations – matter and how or whether they can be integrated into investment analysis.

For all investors, it is important to proactively address these questions because, as the The Thomson Reuters Foundation’s ESG Working Group highlights, social issues can create key risks; they are salient and will be increasingly relevant. Debunking myths around the availability of data on “S” issues and their importance can also help identify more resilient and profitable investment opportunities.

Together, the Group produced a white paper: “Amplifying the “S” in the ESG: Investor Myth Buster”, to help further the momentum for both improving an understanding of the “S” issues and a wider adoption of social criteria in investment strategies.

From Morgan Stanley. Morgan Stanley’s second annual survey of venture capitalists reveals the intensified dialogue around racial inequality has captured investor attention and shifted their attitudes significantly. The increased focus on this issue is leading to investment strategies that include more actions to address disparities in funding for multicultural- and women-founded companies, which are well-documented for women and Black entreprenuers.

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 National Association of Investment Companies (NAIC). Diverse-owned private equity firms continue to outperform their benchmarks, according to Examining the Returns 2019: The Financial Returns of Diverse Private Equity Firms, a study released by NAIC. Despite delivering consistent returns, diverse- and women-owned firms collectively manage only 1.3 percent of the investment industry’s $69 trillion in assets under management.

By Tracy Gray & Emilie Cortes. Foundations and impact investors need to face the ways they are complicit in perpetuating inequality through their capital allocations, and upend five structural investment barriers to better serve women and people of color. Tracy Gray and Emilie Cortes set out five structural barriers that foundation investors and investment committees can easily upend today in their due diligence process to improve outcomes for people of color—especially underrepresented Black, Indigenous, and Latinx people—and women.

From Work and Opportunitites for Women (WOW). We know very little about the millions of women working in global value chains, who grow the food we eat, make the clothes we wear and contribute to products we use every day. Despite being at the heart of global value chains, these women are quite literally invisible; hidden in plain sight. This invisibility prevents women from fully contributing to and benefiting from their productive work. What’s more, the lack of knowledge about this population of workers directly inhibits companies’ ability to make informed business decisions about their supply chains.

This brief is written for companies or practitioners engaging in global value chains, in particular those such as garments, agriculture and personal care, which rely heavily on women workers. It is also aimed at anyone looking to create safe and fair working conditions for all men and women workers.

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 Criterion Institute. The research behind this paper examined power dynamics in the development of two fields, climate finance and gender lens investing. It provides a deeper analysis of the dynamics that have shaped the development of these fields and asks whether the fields have been disruptive enough. Developing field building strategies requires ongoing analysis of power dynamics in the systems that the field touches. How ideas develop and how fields advance are not neutral. Changing systems requires operating within the targeted system and engaging with the power dynamics of that system. There is no way to avoid this fully. To operate within the system and create changes requires engaging with the logic of the system itself and what drives it.

The thesis of this paper is that the awareness of power dynamics will lead to a more intentional design of field building efforts within gender lens investing and climate finance, thereby ensuring that these efforts are addressing and not needlessly calcifying and replicating existing dynamics and inequities in systems of finance.

From OECD. The Addis Ababa Action Agenda of the Third International Conference on Financing for Development commits development actors to a new way of thinking about financing for sustainable development, and official flows beyond Overseas Development Aid (ODA) are becoming an increasingly important feature. This OECD paper sets out an overview of the financing landscape for gender equality and women’s empowerment, a way forward in order to ensure more and better financing for gender equality, and some draft principles to guide future efforts.

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 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.

From Wharton Social Impact Intiative and Catalyst at Large. A follow up to previous reports Project Sage (data through 2017) and Project Sage 2.0 (data through 2018), this latest report is a landscape analysis of structured private equity, venture capital, and private debt funds with a gender lens. Over 138 total funds and structured vehicles were included in this latest analysis, with data collected through December 2019.

Sasakawa Peace Foundation, Catalyst and Large and Sagana partner to map the landscape of gender lens investment vehicles in both public and private markets, across East and Southeast Asia.

Criterion Institute, with the generous support of Dreilinden, has released “Investing with an LGBTQI Lens: Rethinking Gender Analysis Across Investing Fields,” a new guide on investing to further the rights and empowerment of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI) individuals.

We live in a moment where cultural norms, behaviors, and laws related LGBTQI individuals are changing significantly around the globe. On the one hand, there are expanded freedoms for our sexual orientations and gender identities. On the other, persecution and discrimination continue, and in some places are on the rise.

Our guide is an invitation to a range of individuals and institutions—including asset holders, asset managers, philanthropic funders, and gender lens investors—to think about how finance, as a system of power, can be engaged to address the marginalization and oppression of LGBTQI people. The guide also makes the case that incorporating an LGBTQI lens increases the ability of all investors to understand how LGBTQI considerations are material to investment decision making, helping them to uncover hidden opportunities and undervalued risks. Drawing on our 15 years of work building the field of gender lens investing, we describe the ideas, activities, people, and organizations who can participate in building a parallel investing field that achieves true equality for people of all sexual orientations, gender identities, and gender expressions.

From Cambridge Associates. Many institutional investors have long sought to promote social equity through grant making and other philanthropic endeavours. 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 Cambridge Associates 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.

The Alison Rose Review of Female Entrepreneurship (The Rose Review) was born out of a sense of frustration at the unacceptable disparity which exists between female and male entrepreneurs and the slow progress in closing this gap. The prize at stake is significant – representing £250 billion of economic potential for the UK. This progress report, published one years on, tracks progress against eight clear recommendations put forward in the original review, alongside what steps still need to be taken.

Women have made advances in the United States and around the world in recent decades, but they have not achieved parity with men on socioeconomic measures ranging from pay and access to capital to representation on the boards of major corporations. A growing body of evidence suggests that there is not only a moral argument for investing in women, but a business case as well. This guide is intended as a practical guide for individuals and institutions interested in learning about investment opportunities that help advance women.

Among the 63 economies surveyed in both this and the last report, GEM found that Total Entrepreneurial Activity (TEA) among women increased by 10 percent, and the gender gap (ratio of women to men participating in entrepreneurship) narrowed by 5 percent. The 2016/17 GEM Women’s Report also adds a new consideration—that of women as entrepreneurial investors. While participation rates vary, the participation of women as investors suggests a strong resource foundation from which business owners may build.

While the majority of investors perceive the funding landscape as balanced, their actual investments in multicultural and women-owned businesses are highly skewed. In their 2018 survey, Morgan Stanley find out by just how much.

The Women’s Empowerment Principles (WEPs) are a set of Principles offering guidance to business on how to promote gender equality and women’s empowerment in the workplace, marketplace and community. Established by UN Global Compact and UN Women, the WEPs are informed by international labour and human rights standards and grounded in the recognition that businesses have a stake in, and a responsibility for, gender equality and women’s empowerment.