Jeannette and Nisha attended the Gender Lens Investing Breakfast session organized by Sasakawa Peace Foundation (SPF) and Dalberg on 5 June during the AVPN 2018 conference. The objective of the session was to get updates from GLI practitioners and ideate solutions to ‘value’ women by having group discussions on the following topics:
- Diverse needs of female entrepreneurs
- Investors tactics for supporting investees to improve gender impacts
- Metrics and tools to move from ‘counting’ to ‘valuing’ women
Jeannette presented an update on the W+ Standard, the Women and Climate Impact Fund and also the working group on establishing a knowledge platform on GLI.
Here is the summary of the group discussions:
Group 1 Discussion: Understanding the Diverse Needs of Women Entrepreneurs
- Language and framing is extremely important in affecting how we look at women entrepreneurs
- There is a strong need to recognize women entrepreneurs’ needs / motivations as entrepreneurs as much as women
Group 2 Discussion: Moving from Passive to Active Investment Management Approaches for GLI
- To proactively manage and influence their investees to be more gender transformative, investors need to first adopt gender transformation internally as well
- Even for investors, those who are their sources of capital also need to care and adopt a gender lens ultimately
- Co-creating the assessments for gender impact alongside investee companies as well as allowing assessments to be flexible over time can allow for deeper gender impact
- Active investment management approaches can include metrics that go beyond ‘counting'(e.g. measuring a women’s assets over time), have constant measurement over longer periods of time, and tying pay-outs to gender milestones
- Investors may have internal obligations around reporting and measurement so active investment management around gender should integrate with existing investor assessment methodologies where possible to make it more active
Group 3 and 4 Discussion: Metrics that Transition from ‘Counting’ to ‘Valuing’ Women
- Examples of metrics that can more deeply ‘value’ women and incorporated into businesses are:
- Robust sexual harassment policies and procedures
- Women’s economic empowerment, which can be measured by:
- The level of access and agency/control they feel around obtaining/distributing financial resources
- Salaries received
- The career trajectory of women (e.g. the difference in women at senior versus junior levels)
- The extent to which women reap the benefits of a particular product / service