From Criterion Institute. Gender-based violence is material to infrastructure investments. Infrastructure projects designed without a gender lens can lead to unintended consequences, including higher rates of violence; at the same time, well-designed projects can decrease violence and help countries meet development objectives. Institutions can design their investment processes to incorporate a gender-based violence analysis and get to better outcomes.

From Criterion Institute. Private investors have the power and flexibility to move capital to address gender-based violence and/or flow resources towards survivors to shift how financial systems support the reduction of gender-based violence. This Roadmap from Criterion Institute invites private investors to imagine how to shift power dynamics within financial systems to finance the reduce the reduction of gender-based violence.

From Criterion Institute. This Roadmap outlines creating standards and an investment framework that enables public investors to screen companies for potential operational upside and reputational risk related to gender-based violence.

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.

From Criterion Institute. Criterion Institute, in partnership with leading gender lens investors, has identified 10 evidence-based economic patterns and translated them into investment opportunity and risk. Understanding these patterns is critical for investors of all kinds to understand short- and long-term risks, uncover hidden opportunities, and invest to capitalise on both. Understanding these will enable government and impact investors focused on recovery to invest better for the outcomes they seek.

From Digital Undivided. In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, Digital Undivided set out to gain a more holistic understanding of the short and long-term implications on Black women entrepreneurs. This report is a snapshot of the experiences of 1,157 Black women who have applied to the fund, thus far.

From PNAS. Two Stanford researchers find evidence of racial bias in the investment decisions of asset allocators, who manage money for governments, universities, charities, foundations, and companies. This bias could contribute to stark racial disparities in institutional investing. In general, asset allocators have trouble gauging the competence of racially diverse teams. At stronger performance levels, asset allocators rate White-led funds more favourably than they do Black-led funds. At weaker performance levels, asset allocators actually prefer Black-led teams to White-led teams. However, asset allocators are unlikely to invest in weaker funds, diverse or otherwise. These results suggest that beyond racial disparities in the pipeline, there are additional systemic racial disparities in how investors evaluate funds and allocate money.

From the US Small Business Administration. This report addresses key questions comparing the diversity and performance of Small Business Investment Companies (SBICs) with the broader VC and PE community, and asks whether diverse SBICs are more likely to invest in diverse portfolio companies or in low- and moderate-income communities.

From InsuResilience Global Partnership. The aim of this paper is to explore the link between gender and disaster risk financing and insurance – with special focus on Climate Risk Insurance (CRI) – and potential challenges and opportunities for women; provide a stock take of existing CRI schemes that incorporate gender; and set out recommendations on how to further mainstream this topic within the Partnership.

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 IFC/CommDev. This note highlights how increasing gender inclusivity in urban development projects is a key factor in achieving development and investment outcomes.

From the World Bank Group’s Africa Gender Innovation Lab and the Finance, Competitiveness and Innovation Global Practice. This report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions.

From Ms Foundation. This report asks critical questions of philanthropy and donors: How is philanthropy supporting or not supporting women and girls of colour? Are philanthropic practices in alignment with the breadth of advocacy and services that women of colour-led organizations actually provide? How can we change our practices to centre women and girls of colour in our giving and hold ourselves accountable?

From the European Commission. This discussion paper argues that empowering women as founders and investors is crucial to the achievement of the InvestEU goals. InvestEU is the new investment programme to be launched in 2021 under the 2021-2027 multiannual financial framework and financed by the Next Generation EU, aimed at mobilising private and public investment in Europe for more sustainable, inclusive and innovative growth.

Women tend to be associated with long-term, patient capital and more social-impact investment. Women’s wealth is on the rise and represents a huge economic opportunity to accelerate change towards a more diverse and sustainable financial system.

From Women in VC. Any investment in women-led funds stands to have a significantly amplified impact on female founders downstream. It will shift what types of founders are getting funded, at scale, what products and services are brought to market, and who is being served by them. The potential returns are enormous. This report explores the nuances of female partners and women-led funds—the reality, the opportunities available, and the actions needed to move the conversation forward. The data points to an outsized opportunity to anchor and nurture this new wave of women-led funds, and emphasizes why the time to invest in their potential is right now.

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 the International Center for Research on Women (ICRW). Shell Foundation and the UK Government commissioned the ICRW to conduct research on the key challenges women-led ventures face in setting up an energy business in India, and provide recommendations on how key actors in the ecosystem could attract and support women in the sector.

ICRW analysed 23 enterprise development programmes (EDPs) in India and identified four challenge areas:

Challenge 1: Women entrepreneurs are not participating in EDPs at equal rates as men. Challenge 2: Female entrepreneurs often do not have access to the same services and networks that male entrepreneurs do. In addition, services provided by EDPs are often not tailored to the needs of female entrepreneurs. Challenge 3: Investment gaps persist in women-led and co-led ventures. Challenge 4: Government of India (GOI) programmes have limited impact on female entrepreneurs, as deserving women-led ventures are not accessing or benefitting optimally from many GOI schemes.

The report presents solutions to these challenges in a series of tables and practical recommendations, addressed to three main categories of actors: EDPs, investors, and government partners. Each solution is categorised by time frame, potential impact, resource needs and gender focus.

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 Preqin. Covering areas such as first-time fund performance and fundraising, and with examples of LPs that have had success investing in these new managers, LPs reading this report can expect a data-driven overview of first-time fund investing.

First-time funds have traditionally faced challenges securing capital commitments from LPs due to the nature of traditional closedend fund due diligence. Most investment professionals (or their external advisors) with responsibility to vet these private capital funds typically place significant emphasis on the GP’s track record, firm and investment history, and the duration of time for which the investment team has worked together. As closed-end funds are long-term and illiquid investments, many LPs do not feel comfortable committing significant capital to unproven managers, especially as many of these first-time funds focus on diverse and innovative, yet unproven, investment ideas.

Every top performing and “brand name” GP has had to raise a fund for the first time. Whether these first-time funds were teams spun off from a balance sheet at an investment bank or insurance company, or individuals leaving a more established GP to start their own firm, there have always been LPs providing capital commitments to back these investment ideas. Many of the LPs that have supported these first-time GPs’ initial investment strategies and talents have been rewarded with strong (and in some cases, exceptional) fund performance, increased portfolio diversification, experience with niche strategies and other factors beneficial to their overall investment program.