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 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.

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.

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.

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.

From the International Finance Corporation (IFC) and CDC Group. More clarity and guidance is needed by fund managers to understand how to put gender-smart investing into practice. To fill this knowledge gap, IFC, in partnership with CDC and support from the Government of Canada, developed Private Equity and Value Creation: A Fund Manager’s Guide to Gender-smart Investing. The Guide is a practical step-by-step road map for fund managers on how to strengthen gender diversity within their own firms and incorporate a gender focus into investment operations. It combines learnings from CDC and IFC’s experience with over 160 fund managers and draws on best practices with a series of case studies from stakeholders across the industry.

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.

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.

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 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 Green Climate Fund (GCF). This manual addresses GCF’s potential to mainstream gender into climate finance, building on its mandate to support a paradigm shift to low-emission and climate-resilient development. Developed with UN Women, this toolkit guides GCF partners on how to include women, girls, men, and boys from socially excluded and vulnerable communities in all aspects of climate finance.

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.