From GrOW/McGill. This policy brief presents results of a CBA of the subsidized childcare project. Since information about the monetary value of benefits (mothers’ earnings and day care fees saved) is available only for the year that the project was executed, results pertain to the monetization of benefits for this period. Costs include day care fees, cash transfers and expenditures on training and material. Regarding benefits, they can be observed at the child level, the mother level and the sibling level. The monetization of benefits is generally challenging due to the limitations of available data. Thus, the authors provide a monetary value to benefits only in the case they are easily identifiable using data collected during the survey.

Key findings:

• Mothers who used subsidized childcare services experienced an increase in their earnings and free time.

• Attending day care may increase children’s future earnings and life expectancy.

• Subsidized childcare may increase school enrollment for older siblings.

• The benefits associated with providing subsidized early childcare outweigh the costs.

From GrOW/McGill. In this study, researchers tested whether access to affordable and improved-quality day care influenced women’s labor market engagement in Korogocho slum in Nairobi, through the evaluation of a randomized control trial (RCT) with three study arms. Mothers in two of the study arms were given vouchers for subsidized center- based ECC for one year. To examine whether the quality of child care centers affected women’s use of ECC services, about half of the day cares participating in the voucher program were randomly selected to receive additional provider training and materials such as mattresses, potties, toys, and hand-washing stations.

Key findings

• Mothers were eager to send their children to early child care centers.

• Mothers who received subsidized child care were 17% more likely to be employed than mothers who did not.

• Working mothers who received subsidized child care were able to work on average five fewer hours per week than those who did not, without any loss to their earnings.

• Subsidizing child care helped mothers to both find and maintain employment.

• Cost, more so than concerns over quality, is the main barrier to women accessing center-based child care.

From GrOW/McGill. This study takes an in-depth look at the strategies mothers in poor, urban African settings use to reconcile their responsibilities of child care and paid work. The results point to several main conclusions.

• Combining work and child care is difficult, if not impossible, without compromising productivity or the safety of children.

• Relying on family members to assist with child care is not a viable or preferable option for most working mothers.

• Centre-based child care is perceived as offering key advantages to mothers and their children.

• The main barrier to centre-based child care is user costs

From the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Analysis by Dalberg which explores links between unpaid care work and women’s economic empowerment in LMICs.

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.

By Professor Marian Baird and Associate Professor Elizabeth Hill. Analysis from a rapid but extensive literature review around the impacts of COVID-19 and previous pandemics and recessions on women’s economic position. This includes analysis on actual and potential impacts in Indonesia, Myanmar, Philippines and Vietnam, and risks and opportunities looking ahead.

This report was completed by Professor Marian Baird and Associate Professor Elizabeth Hill from the University of Sydney, and funded by Investing in Women.

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.

From PitchBook and All Raise. All Raise’s partnership with PitchBook on this report depicting female founders, female leaders and the overall venture ecosystem both confirms prior All Raise analysis on the state of women in startups and adds new insights about where the market can go from here.

The analysis on funding differences by geography and sector provides actionable data for entrepreneurs and important reflection material for the venture capitalists who fund them. For example, a VC fund investing in fintech can now compare the percentage of female founders in its portfolio to the market to determine if work is needed to diversify its pipeline and/or evolve its investment committee process. This report also illustrates specific geographic regions where companies with female founders thrive and where they fall below the US average.

From the Global Accelerator Learning Initiative (GALI). There is significant evidence that women entrepreneurs face unique challenges in starting and growing businesses, particularly in emerging markets. Acceleration programs represent one potential model for overcoming these challenges through support services and investment. Using GALI data on more than 14,000 ventures across 160 countries, this knowledge brief examines trends in the acceleration of women-led ventures.

Key Takeaways:

• Women-led ventures are under-represented in acceleration. Within the GALI dataset, 52% of founding teams are made up entirely of men, followed by 35% with both men and women, and only 13% comprised entirely of women entrepreneurs.

• Women-led ventures have less investment coming into acceleration, and appear less investment oriented than men-led ventures. By the time they apply, men-led ventures are more than twice as likely than women-led ventures to have secured some equity investment. In addition, women-led ventures have lower fundraising targets and are less likely to prioritize "access to investors" as a benefit of the acceleration experience. However, even when controlling for a range of venture and founder characteristics, there remains a statistically significant gender gap in equity financing.

• Acceleration alone does not close the gender financing gap. The equity gap persists in acceleration: Men-led and women-led ventures that participated in accelerators were similarly likely to increase their annual revenue and full-time employees, yet women-led ventures raise on average nearly US $100,000 less in equity as men-led ventures and secure less than half as much new debt.

• Representation within programs has an impact on gender diversity of applicant pools, but it’s unclear what methods actually help women-led ventures grow. Having more women on selection committees and as mentors is associated with more women-led ventures in applicant pools and cohorts. However, when it comes to program design, interviewed accelerator representatives hold a range of perspectives on how to support women entrepreneurs, demonstrating a lack of consistent understanding of the issues and best practices on addressing the challenges.

More women are working in the alternatives space than two years ago, specifically at private equity, venture capital, and hedge fund firms. Globally, the proportion of alternative assets employees that are female has grown to 19.7% from 18.8% in 2017.

Although this represents real gains, across all private capital and hedge fund industries, women are still underrepresented and there are significant variations in female representation across asset class, geography and seniority.

The data in this report has been compiled using Prequin’s database of over 200,000 industry professionals to highlight the trends in the workforces of active fund managers and investors.

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.

By Calvin Miller and Linda Jones. This book provides a comprehensive look at the models, tools and approaches used by industry leaders in all parts of the developing world. These are described, analyzed and illustrated using many rich examples in order to demonstrate how they work and to extract lessons and applications for others to adapt. The book includes 40 industry examples and 5 comprehensive case studies to enrich learning.

From the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO). The State of Food and Agriculture 2010–11 by FAO makes the business case for addressing gender issues in agriculture and rural employment. The agriculture sector is underperforming in many developing countries, in part because women do not have equal access to the resources and opportunities they need to be more productive. The gender gap imposes real costs on society in terms of lost agricultural output, food security and economic growth. Promoting gender equality is not only good for women; it is also good for agricultural development.

From Tribe. In this short paper, Tribe and Suzanne Biegel explore the rise of gender lens investment, its role in delivering the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (“Global Goals” or “UN SDGs”) and how to build a strategy that reflects an investor’s desire help make change happen. The authors draw on their collective experience to outline the different approaches that can be activated across a portfolio.

From Equileap. Equileap’s global 2018 report measures how well companies do in offering equal gender opportunities based on 19 criteria, and presents the top 200 scorers.

This primer explores the link between value creation and gender diverse companies; highlights the rising trend of colleges and universities moving towards mission-aligned investing; and outlines a diverse range of tools and investment strategies available to decision makers as they consider the integration of gender lens products in endowments. 

From BNY Mellon and the United Nations Foundation. The potential economic and development gains from gender equality are vast and well-documented — and yet they are currently being bypassed. This report explores the market potential of advancing gender equality.

From BNY Mellon. This report, a companion to the original Return on Equality publication, shines a spotlight on the opportunity to realise gains — in both gender equality and market returns — by increasing women’s financial inclusion around the world. Its aim is to inspire financial services providers to design and market products and services that fuel women’s full economic participation, and to encourage investors to steer their capital toward such companies.

From UBS. This report offers actionable ways for private citizens to deploy their wealth and power towards improving gender equality.

From the Center for High Impact Philanthropy at UPENN. This paper presents a detailed summary of the data available to investors around enhancing the lives of women, as well as a discussion about how to use data to select stocks and engage as a shareholder to influence the companies you own. One of the most important revelations to emerge from our research and analysis is that mission alignment is possible for grants and public equity investments—and infusing our framework into grantmaking guidelines and investment policy statements can lead to better outcomes.