• According to McKinsey & Company, greater gender diversity in the workforce could enhance business performance by 15%.

• The World Bank estimates that closing gender gaps in economic participation could add $160 trillion to global human capital wealth and increase global GDP by up to 26%.

• Gender-diverse investing teams have 20% higher net IRRs in global emerging markets

• If women and men were to simply participate equally as entrepreneurs, global GDP could rise by 3-6%, boosting the world economy by US $2.5-5 trillion.

• Diverse teams are 45% more likely to improve market share

• Cognitive diversity can make teams up to 66% more productive

• Companies with the highest levels of racial and ethnic diversity at the executive level outperform in terms of profitability by 36%

• Providing childcare to women could add USD 3 trillion to global GDP and expanding the childcare workforce to meet the current needs can create 43 million jobs globally

• There is a growing body of evidence linking gender (and other forms) of) diversity with improved financial performance - although it's worth noting much of the data implies correlation rather than causation.

• Research in HBR found that after women joined the C-suite, firms became both more open to change and less risk-seeking. In other words, these organisations increasingly embraced transformation while seeking to reduce the risks associated with it.

• Over 10 years of investing, companies with a female founder performed 63% better than those with all-male founding teams.

• Companies with the highest levels of racial and ethnic diversity at the executive level outperform in terms of profitability by 36%

• Only 12.0% of venture capital decision makers in the US are women. However, 69.2% of the top-performing funds in 2019 had female general partners (GPs).

• An examination of demographics and investment decisions among VC firm teams from 1990-2018 found that diversity improved profitable investments at the individual portfolio-company level and overall fund returns. Teams that shared the same ethnicity experienced a lower success rate for investments: 26.4%, compared to 32.2% for diverse teams. Yet only 0.2% of female VC partners in the US are black, 0.2% LatinX, and 0.4% South Asian.

• In a study of Russell 1000 companies, Glenmede Investment Management found that firms with greater gender diversity (defined as: female CEO or Chair; greater than 20% women on the board; and greater than 25% women in management) outperformed with greater return and less risk. Despite this, less than 3% of global VC funding goes to companies with a female CEO, and 86% of all VC funded businesses have no women in management positions.

• According to the 2022 Equileap report, 5% companies globally have a female CEO, 13% have a female CFO and 7% have a female chair of their board. Five years after the beginning of the #MeToo movement, 2021 was the first year during which more than half of companies globally had an anti-sexual harassment policy (53%).

• Publicly listed companies in Latin America with higher female representation yielded 44% higher ROI and 47% higher profit margins

• The US economy lost $16tn in the last 20 years due to discrimination in Black wages, education, housing and investment.

• In a McKinsey survey of 1,000 companies in 12 countries, companies lacking in diversity were 29% more likely to underperform.

• The cost of violence against women is 2% of global GDP, equivalent to US$1.5tn

• Investing public funds in childcare and elder care services is a more worthwhile and effective investment in reducing public deficits and debt than austerity policies; as it would boost employment, earnings, economic growth and fosters gender equality.

Gender lens investing has been steadily growing as a public market strategy, as seen from the following timeline:

• From 1993-2012, only five gender lens strategies existed in the public markets.

• From 2013 to 2018, at least 30 strategies launched in the public markets, bringing the total value of investments in gender lens products in the public market to $2.4 billion.

• The 2018 Veris Wealth report identified seven mutual funds, nine exchange traded fund (ETFs), three gender equality bond issues, one exchange traded note, and one certificate of deposit (CD) that employed one or more of the following gender lens investing strategies: screening, proxy voting, or shareholder engagement.

• As of June 2019, asset growth in GLI products accelerated and totalled $3.4 billion, with 50 publicly available GLI products, a 300% increase since 2015. There were 10 investment products over $100 million and six with over $250 million.

• Research by Parallelle Finance, Veris Wealth Partners, and Pensions & Investments/Crain tracked a growth from $3.4B in mid-2019 to $11B at the end of 2020, following the $2.9B Morningstar/GPIF announcement. According to Parallelle Finance, publicly traded gender lens equity funds (GLEFs) - excluding institutionally available funds, SMAs, etc - totaled US$4 billion in AUM as of December 31, 2021. AUM grew 12% during the fourth quarter.

• The total value of public equity and fixed income GLI funds accelerated to over $12 billion USD as of June 2021, with more than 200 GLI offerings raising a combined $6 billion USD in 2021.

As investors press for greater corporate disclosures and companies become more transparent, gender-related data is increasingly available. This is evidenced by the surge in gender-specific data collected on publicly owned companies. The Equileap Global Gender Report ranks nearly 4,000 companies not just by women in leadership, but also by gender pay parity, parental leave policies, and reports of sexual harassment. As of its 2022 report, the Equileap Global Gender Equality 100 Leaders Index was set to reach US $1 billion assets under management.

• In the private markets, gender lens investing has been defined by three distinct approaches: Funding access to capital, investing in women leaders, and investing in women-focused products & services.

• Catalyst at Large and Wharton Social Impact Initiative have published Project Sage data for private market vehicles - PE, VC, private debt, and including permanent capital vehicles in the private space - through mid 2021 - most recently, Project Sage 4.0. They found 206 gender lens funds, representing 49% growth from the 138 funds in Project Sage 3.0 (published in July 2020) and 255% growth from the 58 funds in the first Project Sage (published October 2017). According to the most recent report, total capital raised has cleared $6 billion.

• Yet investment firms owned by women or people of colour are still vastly underinvested in, managing just 1.4% of US assets under management.

• Across 206 private markets funds featured in 2021’s Project Sage 4.0, there was a $7 billion funding gap between what fund managers were targeting to raise and what they had raised already.

• In 2020, VC dollars invested in female-founded companies fell by 3% and deal count fell by 2% year-over-year. At the same time, the US startup ecosystem increased deal value by 16% – meaning female founders received a smaller portion of a larger pie. In the UK in 2020, women entrepreneurs represented over USD 349 billion of untapped economic potential. For every £1 of VC investment in the UK, all-female founders receive less than 1p.

• Within the funding gap for gender-lens funds, there are significant variations in funding for women in minority groups. Project Diane/Digital Undivided research finds that women of colour CEOs receive less than 1% of venture capital (VC) funding. Over the past decade, start-ups led by Latina women have raised just 0.32% and black women have received only 0.06%. In the UK, Extend Ventures looked at ten years of VC funding for the startup community, and found that 11% of funding went to women, 0.24% went to Black founders, and 0.02% went to Black female founders - just 16 women.

• The current unmet demand for credit among women-owned formal micro SMEs in developing markets is estimated at $1.6 trillion, presenting an immense opportunity for financial institutions seeking new markets and sources of growth.

• In Africa, the African Development Bank estimates that the funding gap between men and women stands at around USD 42 billion.

• A 2020 report estimates that if financial access for women in Nigeria, Pakistan and Bangladesh alone had grown at the same rate experienced by men, a further 50 million new account holders would have been added in the three previous years.

• Women start 40 percent of the businesses in the U.S., but they receive just 3% of venture funding. (Black and Latina women founders fare worse, receiving less than half a percent of all US VC investment in 2020.) In the UK, the Rose Report estimated that £250 billion could be added to the UK economy if women entrepreneurs were funded at the same level as men.

• In the U.S., 61% of Black women self-fund their total start-up costs. However, just 29% of Black women entrepreneurs live in households with incomes over $75,000, compared to 52% of White men.

• More donors and other investors are increasingly lending on a gender lens basis: in a recent ecosystem scan of 16 DFIs and MDBs, 14 had a gender strategy in place, and all had some level of gender awareness in their investments.

• 73% of Canadian investors want a portion of their portfolio invested in organisations providing opportunities for advancement of women and diverse groups

• Both the New York City Retirement System and APG, two of the world’s largest pension funds, added sections to their due diligence questionnaires about gender. The Illinois State Treasury also incorporated a comprehensive commitment to gender equity and social justice in their portfolio (with $15B under management in college and savings plans), including 40% of the committed capital from the Illinois Growth and Innovation Fund going to diverse fund managers. And, while the state of California has made it illegal to base investment decisions on gender or ethnic criteria, CalPERS (who seeded the State Street SHE ETF with $250M in 2016) found a way around this by targeting first time funds through an emerging manager program - a disproportionate number of whom are female and/or BIPOC.

• According to RBC Wealth Management, U.S.-based female clients are almost twice as likely as their male counterparts to say it is important that the companies they invest in integrate ESG factors into their policies and decisions. They are also more likely to prioritise ESG impact when considering what companies or funds to invest in--according to BCG, 64% of women say that they factor ESG concerns into their investment decisions--while male clients are much more likely to prioritise financial performance.

• In a survey from Morgan Stanley Wealth Management, a majority of high-net-worth investors found the following important in companies they invest in: that they have policies in place to promote diversity, equity and inclusion (67%); that they hire and promote employees of diverse backgrounds (66%); and that they have people of diverse backgrounds in leadership positions (63%). This number is likely to increase as Millenial and Generation Z consumers and investors gain more financial power.

• Women now control nearly 60% of the wealth in the United States and continue to control more assets globally: from $34 trillion in 2010 to $72 trillion in 2020. This will rise at a compound annual growth rate of 5.7% to USD 97 trillion by 2024, outpacing the growth of men’s wealth. BCG reported in 2020 that women’s wealth in the Middle East amounted to almost USD 800 billion, or 13% of total wealth in the region. According to an analysis by BCG and ​​Nikkei Asia, women in Asia (ex-Japan) will hold $27 trillion in wealth by 2026, $6 trillion more than women in Western Europe.

• This has created prospective investors who will in many cases expect financial advisers to understand their needs and priorities.

• Yet within private wealth, a study by UBS Unique and BCG found that only 2% of wealth managers treat and service women as a distinct group with specific interests. 50% of women who purchase financial services products for their corporations express dissatisfaction with the gender balance of teams that serve them. Based on EY research, 67% of female investors globally stated that their wealth managers misunderstood their goals.

• All-female teams seeking VC spend 30% less time on the fundraising ask, 50% more time on the traction section and 24% more time on the product slides - they’re scrutinised harder and longer, and in the end, raise an average of 30% less than male founding teams.

• A 2017 report on the impact of gender bias in society on GDP growth globally concluded that societies that have more gender bias have lower per capita GDP.

• BCG data shows that among companies where men are actively involved in gender diversity, 96% report progress. Conversely, among companies where men are not involved, only 30% show progress

• McKinsey’s Women in the Workplace 2022 found women leaders switching jobs at higher rates than every before, in part due to the microaggressions that undermine their authority and signal that it will be harder for them to advance. The study found that women leaders are far more likely than men in leadership to have colleagues imply that they aren’t qualified for their jobs, and women leaders are twice as likely as men leaders to be mistaken for someone more junior. Women leaders are also more likely to report that personal characteristics, such as their gender or being a parent, have played a role in them being denied or passed over for a raise, promotion, or chance to get ahead.

• A comprehensive and compelling case can be found in Criterion Institute's 10 Points Why Gender is Material to Investments in the Recovery.

• During the pandemic, women left the workforce in greater numbers than men, due to a multitude of factors—largely their higher representation in low-wage sectors that are being hit the hardest by the pandemic, but also factors such as providing unpaid child and elder care and experiencing higher rates of violence. This decline in women’s employment cost women around the world at least $800 billion in lost income in 2020, equivalent to more than the combined GDP of 98 countries, according to Oxfam.

• 64% of female-led businesses were strongly affected by the COVID 19 pandemic, compared with 52% of male-led companies, according to the International Trade Centre. Nearly 90% of female entrepreneurs reported a decrease in sales in the first and second quarters of 2020, according to a survey by WEConnect International.

• The burden of unpaid care has disproportionately fallen on women and girls during the pandemic, and these rates are much higher for women of colour. Globally, female entrepreneurs are 10% more likely than male entrepreneurs to say that domestic responsibilities impacted their work during the pandemic.

• Despite these disproportionate negative impacts, women entrepreneurs have found ways to innovate. According to an October 2020 report from the Female Founders Forum, 60% of female-founded, equity-backed businesses in the UK were operating with minimal disruption to their business. A 2020 survey by professional women’s network AllBright found one in four women setting up their own business as a result of the pandemic.

• Pilot studies of SMEs and clean energy value chains, found that implementing a holistic gender inclusion strategy could impact sales by up to 85%

• Refugee women (who make up the majority of climate refugees) could generate up to $1.4 trillion to annual global GDP if employment and earnings gender gaps were closed to meet the national levels of hosting countries

• Closing the financing gaps for girl’s education, leading to smaller family sizes, could draw down projected carbon dioxide emissions by as much as 102.96 gigatons, reports Project Drawdown

• Companies with high numbers of female board members are more likely to improve their energy efficiency and reduce their environmental impact

• Firms with gender diverse boards are more likely to consume higher proportions of renewable energy, which also correlates with improved financial performance and increased company value.

• Women farmers lack the same access to resources as men which, if redressed, could increase on- farm yields by 20 – 30%.