From the US Department of State- This report details the first National Strategy on Gender Equity and Equality from the USA and presents a comprehensive overview of the government approach.

From The Venture Capital Accelerator- The Mensarius Oath is an ethical code of conduct for venture capitalists and other finance professionals that is designed to foster positive outcomes for humanity. The Mensarius Oath was originally developed by the Founder Institute in March of 2020 to inspire a new class of ethical investors that focus on both societal and economic returns.

From McKinsey. An updated view into gender and racial diversity in financial services—as well as women’s day-to-day work experiences—reveals some progress. But challenges in building an equitable and inclusive workplace persist.

At the beginning of 2021, women in North America remained dramatically underrepresented in the financial-services workforce—particularly at the level of senior management and above. A new industry-specific analysis of data from the latest Women in the Workplace report, a McKinsey collaboration with LeanIn.Org, reveals a leaky pipeline from which women are falling out in greater numbers as they progress up the career ladder, resulting in significant inequality at the top. Consistent with previous years, women in financial services continue to experience a “broken rung” at the first step from entry level to manager—where they are significantly less likely than men to be promoted (for more about our research, see sidebar “About the research and findings”). At the same time, women leaders have taken on the additional responsibilities of supporting employees and investing in diversity and inclusion during the COVID-19 pandemic—but they aren’t being rewarded for this critical work.

From Top 1000 Funds. Assessing, managing and changing diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) is set to become the data issue of the 2020s, as investors turn their attention to the power they have to advocate for change in the companies they invest in, and the firms that manage their money.

From ImpactAlpha. Investors and executives can lead in many ways as they seek to fulfill their often heartfelt pledges to advance racial justice and dismantle systemic racism. One of the most effective and scalable: use their voices and lobbying power to advocate for policies that reduce racialized inequality and increase investments in Black communities, businesses, workers and people. Such policies, says Oakland-based think tank PolicyLink, are analogous to street corner curb cuts. Just as ramps and wheelchair access for people with disabilities benefit parents with strollers, travelers with roller-bags, skateboarders and bicyclists, “intentional investments in Black Americans have benefits that cascade out, improving the lives of all struggling people as well as regional economies and the nation as a whole.”

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 Forbes. There have been at least six shareholder proposals during this proxy season, according to Parallelle Finance, a research firm that monitors, analyses and advocates for gender lens investing. It appears that shareholder activism is increasingly a successful strategy by investors to enhance companies’ performance and disclosures on environmental, social and governance (ESG) criteria, including in diversity and inclusion.

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 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 Bamboo Capital Partners. The International Trade Center, CARE Enterprises and Bamboo Capital Partners have joined forces in their mission to help achieve gender equality with the CARE-SheTrades Fund. The Fund was launched in June 2018 by Bamboo and CARE to drive progress towards gender justice in South and Southeast Asia. The ITC, a joint agency of the World Trade Organization and the United Nations, has now joined the Fund. The ITC will leverage its extensive SheTrades network connecting export-ready women entrepreneurs and women-owned businesses to markets around the world, to identify pipeline companies for investments.

By Erin L. Thomas, PhD, VP, Head of Diversity, Inclusion & Belonging at Upwork. “At Upwork, we stand firmly against racial injustice and are working to create a safe environment for honest conversations about race, including how we can effectively upend the chronic racism that many of our team members experience every day. We recognize that we also have much progress to make within Upwork, and we have committed to take action toward building a more diverse and inclusive workplace.“

From 2X Challenge. Gender lens investing (“GLI”) has gained significant traction globally and a compelling business case combined with a strong impact case makes GLI attractive to impact-driven and purely commercial investors alike. Despite this and the emergence of key tools, training and resources during 2020, the funding gap to achieve the Sustainable Development Goal #5 (Gender Equality) remains a significant challenge. To truly mainstream GLI, investors have called for concrete guidance on how to structure a gender lens into the legal documentation of a transaction. Responding to this growing demand, Hogan Lovells and 2X Challenge have launched Aurora: The Gender Lens Project.

From Harvard Business Review. Iceland’s equal pay for equal work system is still in the early stages, but initial signs suggest that requiring organizations prove they compensate employees fairly may be very effective. Much more effective, in any case, than the alternatives currently in place elsewhere. Introduced in 2018, the policy requires companies and institutions with more than 25 employees to prove that they pay men and women equally for a job of equal value. If companies show they pay equally for the same positions, they receive certification. Beginning in 2020, certification became a requirement and companies without certification incur a daily fine. The few issues that have thus far emerged, such as the burdensomeness of the process for managers, are start-up problems, moreover, not long-term consequences. And what’s more: the system has stimulated both-in-firm and societal discussions about how jobs are valued, based on what criteria, and whether these criteria are still relevant in the current society and labor market.

From the Financial Times. All-women and mixed-gender US fund teams outperformed all-male portfolio management teams so far this year, according to a Goldman Sachs analysis that raises fresh questions about the investment industry’s progress in addressing its gender diversity problems.

To mark the centenary of US women winning the right to vote, Goldman analysed 496 large-cap US equity funds with combined assets of $2.3tn to compare the performance of funds where at least one-third of the portfolio management roles were female with portfolio management teams run entirely by men.

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.

From the Harvard Business Review. Research repeatedly shows that companies with diversity in senior leadership significantly outperform their all-white, all-male counterparts. Diverse leadership generates better financial performance, stronger innovation, and higher levels of startup success. Yet, despite compelling performance data, venture capital isn’t following the opportunity. This is true for a variety of well-documented reasons: gender and racial stereotyping, unconscious bias, systemic economic barriers, and Silicon Valley’s preference for serial entrepreneurs. Chief executive officers, chief investment officers, board members and trustees of large institutional investors — many of whom claim to care about diversity and inclusion — can make a meaningful difference by holding venture capital funds accountable with three changes to operating practices that have proven effective: 1) Require their long-established VC fund managers to report the number of companies with gender and racially diverse leadership they are investing in, as well as the capital committed to these companies — both during due diligence for all new funds and at annual performance reviews; 2) monitor the number of women, Black, and Latinx people in senior decision-making investment roles at their established VC funds; and 3) adopt new guidelines to invest in high-performing emerging VC funds that are 100% committed to gender and racial diversity.

By Jasmine Rashid. It’s time we demystify your money’s role in racial (in)justice. The US system of finance has long been a system of exploitation, and lack of access to capital continues to be the largest contributor of chronic racial inequality that reinforces the myth (and violent consequences) of white supremacy. Regardless of your personal relationship to finance, you’re already using money to support or undercut your values each day. Wealth holders and capital directors use the language of “liabilities” and “assets” to ensure that economics remains in the realm of limited accessibility. But here is some plain English for you: where you bank, how you spend, and what you invest in matters for Black lives.

From Echoing Green. It’s not enough to desire equity and sustainability in our recovery. It is time to act, to make it so, and that leadership must be rooted in racial equity; anything else will be far too incremental, far too hollow, and far too idle to meet this moment. As many leaders and organizations (including many in Echoing Green’s community) have long known, successfully changing the world depends on taking an intentional, explicit, and sustained focus on addressing racial disparities across the problems we are trying to solve. Because of this, we call on all those who care about progress and positive social change, including funders, to implement five strategies as we move forward together.

By Kristin Hull, PhD. From taking a knee, to blacking out our social media, to raising our fists in protest, many of us are experiencing outrage, frustration, anguish and empathy for all that is unfolding in our country. From committing to learn about white privilege, to taking steps to dismantle systemic racism and white supremacy, to donating to organizations supporting racial justice, and shopping at Black owned businesses near our homes and online, many of us are stepping up to support in all of the ways we know how.

2020 has seen an unraveling of our social contracts, and as we look to rebuild our economy and reweave our society, it’s time to center the black community and those previously marginalized from planning and decision making tables.

From the Boston Globe. The inequities of those most impacted by COVID-19, Black- and brown- majority communities, show that we are not, in fact, in this together. People of color, particularly from Black- and brown-majority communities, have accounted for significantly higher COVID-19 related deaths; the survival rates of their businesses are positioned to follow a similar trajectory. Before the World Health Organization deemed the coronavirus a pandemic, Black businesses were already reeling. Black entrepreneurs are denied bank loans more than twice as often than their white peers — 53 percent to 25 percent. And people of color pay higher interest rates on average than their white peers — 7.8 percent to 6.4 percent. In addition, Black firms’ vulnerability is made evident by who was able to weather the 2008 Recession. About half of Black businesses survived, compared to 60 percent of white-owned firms, according to US Census research.