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Global Handbook of Impact Investing: Solving Global Problems via Smarter Capital Markets Towards a More Sustainable Society

Edited by Elsa De Morais Sarmento and R. Paul Herman. This is a guide to the growing world-wide movement of Impact Investing. Impact investors seek to realize lasting, beneficial improvements in society by allocating capital to sources of impactful and sustainable profit. This handbook is a how-to guide for institutional investors, including family offices, foundations, endowments, governments, and international organizations, as well as academics, students, and everyday investors globally. The handbook´s wide-ranging contributions from around the world make a powerful case for positive impact and profit to fund substantive, lasting solutions that solve critical problems across the world.

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Invisible Women: Exposing Data Bias in a World Designed for Men

By Caroline Criado-Perez. This book exposes the gender data gap - a gap in our knowledge that is at the root of perpetual, systemic discrimination against women, and that has created a pervasive but invisible bias with a profound effect on women's lives. Criado-Perez brings together an impressive range of case studies, stories and new research from across the world that illustrate the hidden ways in which women are forgotten, and the impact this has on their health and well-being. From government policy and medical research, to technology, workplaces, urban planning and the media, Invisible Women reveals the biased data that excludes women.

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Data Feminism

By Catherine D'Ignazio and Lauren F. Klein. In this book, D'Ignazio and Klein present a new way of thinking about data science and data ethics—one that is informed by intersectional feminist thought. Illustrating data feminism in action, the authors show how challenges to the male/female binary can help challenge other hierarchical (and empirically wrong) classification systems. They explain how, for example, an understanding of emotion can expand our ideas about effective data visualization, and how the concept of invisible labor can expose the significant human efforts required by our automated systems. And they show why the data never, ever “speak for themselves.” Data Feminism offers strategies for data scientists seeking to learn how feminism can help them work toward justice, and for feminists who want to focus their efforts on the growing field of data science. But Data Feminism is about much more than gender. It is about power, about who has it and who doesn't, and about how those differentials of power can be challenged and changed.

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Letting Go: How Philanthropists and Impact Investors Can Do More Good by Giving Up Control

It’s an open secret: philanthropy today is top-heavy and insular. A glance at the world’s largest foundations and impact investment funds reveals that decision-makers tend to be disproportionately white, male, and from backgrounds of privilege. And decisions tend to be made in a closed, opaque way.

In Letting Go, Ben Wrobel and Meg Massey tell the story of the funders who have chosen to cede decision-making power to people with lived experience of the problem at hand. The stories range from a global foundation run by and for young feminist activists, to a neighborhood loan fund in Boston controlled by working-class residents of color.

As this book reveals, it’s not only possible to shift power in philanthropy and impact investing – it’s imperative in a world where inequality is reaching a breaking point.

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The First Political Order: How Sex Shapes Governance and National Security Worldwide

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.

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Unlocking the opportunity in the Pacific menstrual health market: Lessons learned from a workshop of menstrual health actors working in the Asia-Pacific region

The Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade (DFAT) has now completed an extensive research, engagement and outreach process to determine the potential of a menstrual health market (the market) across the Pacific Island countries.

In September 2018 the Criterion Institute, supported by DFAT and Pacific Readiness for Investment in Social Enterprise (Pacific RISE), facilitated a four-day workshop in Melbourne, Australia. The workshop brought together a diverse range of social and business actors focused on improving menstrual health management (MHM) in the Asia-Pacific region to understand and overcome inefficiencies and obstacles in the menstrual health market across the region. The workshop focused on understanding the challenges faced by local social enterprises and identifying opportunities to improve market performance, and how appropriate types of capital could increase local access to menstrual health products. Attention was also paid to the role public and private actors play in facilitating universal access to menstrual products and addressing systemic socio-cultural, educational and environmental barriers to menstrual health across the region.

The workshop brought together 43 participants from 13 countries: Australia, Fiji, Indonesia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Philippines, Republic of the Marshall Islands, Solomon Islands, Samoa, Timor-Leste, United Kingdom, United States of America, and Vanuatu.

This report presents lessons learned from menstrual health actors working in the Asia-Pacific region and focuses on the local context of island-based nations. The first of its kind, it should be read as a unique case-study that captures the specific menstrual health challenges faced by countries with dispersed populations across large geographic locations with limited income and commercial access. It explores how innovative investment can be a means of facilitating a new market opportunity, enabling improved access to necessary healthcare products, and support venture creation for women-led businesses.

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UMass IBM Case Study: Collecting LGBT+ Data for Diversity: Initiating Self-ID at IBM

From University of Massachusetts Amherst. In this study of IBM’s LGBT+ self-identification practice, we inaugurate a series of case studies of diversity and inclusion policies and practices adopted by innovative companies.

This report and the series are designed to explore the business rationale and goals of IBM and other companies when adopting inclusive policies and practices, to assess the impact of the policies and practices, and to provide insight for employers who might learn from the experiences of innovators. The series will also serve learning goals for students and other relevant practitioners. After a brief introduction, this report describes how IBM’s selfID process works. The second section describes how IBM arrived at this moment, and the third and fourth sections describe implementation and the uses of the data. The final section looks ahead to the future of the practice.

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Translation Between Gender and Finance

From Criterion Institute. The success of the field of gender lens investing is dependent on the elevation of translators and translation: individuals, organizations, and processes that facilitate understanding between gender and finance expertise. The accumulation of a wider variety of voices in decision-making is needed to improve both the financial returns and the gender and social impact of the program designs in the field.

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The Impact Investor: Lessons in Leadership and Strategy for Collaborative Capitalism

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.

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Political Risk: Investment Approaches Roadmap

From Criterion Institute. There is a documented correlation between levels of violence against women and state instability. In fact, the level of violence against women in a given country is said to be a better predictor of peace, compliance with treaty obligations, and relations with neighboring countries than indicators measuring levels of wealth or democracy. Yet the methodologies currently used to measure political risk—which guide investors, corporations, insurers, and governments in assessing conditions that may impact the profitability of investments in a particular country—do not include indicators measuring violence against women. This is despite the fact that these same methodologies account for riots, terrorism, civil war, and other types of violence.

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Viability of Gender Bonds in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Landscape Analysis and Feasibility Assessment

Gender lens investing (GLI) is based on the premise that investing in companies that promote gender equality through their internal policies or through their business activities is not only morally responsible but can lead to higher financial returns. To date, the majority of GLI in Sub-Saharan Africa has been carried out through dedicated investment vehicles such as Alitheia, a Nigerian private equity fund which uses a gender lens approach, or initiatives such as the IFC’s Banking on Women (in conjunction with Goldman Sachs’ 10,000 Women). Now, a number of development finance institutions (DFIs), development agencies and investor groups are looking to expand the footprint of GLI, popularise gender considerations in investing and provide greater clarity about GLI.

Gender bonds, as a recent development in both the themed bond space and in the GLI space, are still relatively poorly defined, beyond being bonds that support the advancement, empowerment and equality of women. No official or universal definition exists. Like other themed bonds, gender bonds can be issued as senior unsecured notes referencing the balance sheet of the issuer, where proceeds are ringfenced for specific use on eligible ‘gender’ activities, or as securitisations referencing a pool of assets directly (e.g. issued off balance sheet by an SPV into which a portfolio of eligible loans are placed).

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Gender Lens Investing in Public Markets: It’s More Than Women at the Top

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.

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Diversity and Equality: Longer Term Investments

From UBS. Over the last decade, social diversity and economic inequalities have come to the fore as social and political flash points in advanced economies and beyond. They are stoking public calls for change and presenting disruption and opportunities alike to the global economy.

In this long-term investment theme, UBS analysts focus on applying a diversity lens to investing in public equities, one that homes in on the impact of diversity on the economic labor force and the corporate workplace. While gender lens investing has been a core pillar of sustainable investing for the last decade, our understanding of social inequalities and the intersection of gender with other forms of diversity is a more recent development.

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Gender & Climate Investment: A strategy for unlocking a sustainable future

GenderSmart Climate & Gender Working Group
Content Partner: Kite Insights

Climate change is set to cause unimaginable ecological, societal and economic disruption if its progress is not slowed. And these impacts will disproportionately affect women, low-income, and other disadvantaged groups. By the same token, gender equality and women’s leadership can jump-start climate action and climatesmart solutions, to build environmental sustainability and resilience.

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Venture Capital and Racial Equality: How Attitudes and Actions Are Evolving and What Continues to Hold the Industry Back

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.

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The Equity Equation: A Roadmap to Equity, Diversity and Inclusion in Canadian Finance

From WCM. The Equity Equation is an industry-wide study of employee experiences in Canada’s finance industry. It investigates how gender, race and sexual orientation impacts an employees’ experience at work.

The Equity Equation aims to inform the finance industry’s diversity strategies and best practices, and to equip WCM’s partner firms, their leaders, managers and employees with tangible recommendations to advance equity. These recommendations offer a roadmap for our partners who wish to advance equity, diversity and inclusion.

This report is based on survey data gathered in 2019 by WCM, from 600 professionals working in firms in Canada’s finance industry. Respondents span many demographic groups, including gender, sexual orientation, race, seniority level, age and areas of capital markets.1 WCM’s future research will further explore the lived experiences of a wider range of intersectionalities, including disabilities. Full datasets to each survey question are presented in the "Selected Survey Responses" section from page 18 onwards.

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The Tapestry of Black Business Ownership in America: Untapped Opportunities for Success

From the Association for Enterprise Opportunity. There exists a wide tapestry of Black-owned businesses and their owners in the United States — with different countries of origin, focused on different goals, and with different needs — spreading from coast to coast. This report begins to describe those segments and launches the discussion on how to tailor appropriate supports.

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Nordea On Your Mind: Diversity As a Value Driver

From Nordea Markets. Companies with a more gender-balanced leadership have more stable returns. That’s the result of an analysis by Nordea Markets based on a sample of 100 Nordic blue-chip companies that examined how gender diversity affects the performance, and hence value, of large companies.

The results, reported in the February 2018 issue of Nordea On Your Mind, showed that the companies with the most gender-diverse management had 40 percent lower volatility in ROCE (return on capital employed). The companies in the study with more gender-diverse boards of directors also had significantly lower volatility in returns, although the results were most striking at the group management level.

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Addressing Gender-Based Violence and Harassment: Emerging Good Practice for the Private Sector

From the International Finance Corporation (IFC), the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development (EBRD), and CDC Group. This note outlines emerging practices in addressing gender-based violence and harassment (GBVH) in operations and investments. These practices are drawn from recent experience in the private sector, as well as a larger body of work from the non-profit sector. The guidance provides an opportunity to engage with stakeholders to refine practices as those in the private sector collectively gain implementation experience.

In addition to this note, sector-specific briefs provide targeted guidance on addressing GBVH risks in key sectors, including transport, construction and manufacturing.

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Addressing Gender-Based Violence in Kenya Through Targeted Investments

From Criterion Institute. Impact investors who want to promote women’s economic empowerment must address gender-based violence as part of their strategies, given how high rates of violence are in Kenya. Impact investors have the power to address both violence and broader economic empowerment by incorporating a gender-based violence lens in screening, structuring, and analyzing investments. The coordination of their efforts will enable finance to reduce gender-based violence in Kenya.

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