Reports
Just Good Investing: Why gender matters to your portfolio and what you can do about it
December 05, 2018
There is a growing evidence and collective understanding that gender equity is good for investment, good for businesses, good for society. However, this understanding still has not translated into widespread action in the investment world.
Why? After a year-long series of meetings with investors around the world, we found two reasons for this lack of action:
- The business case for incorporating gender into investment needs to be strengthened from a private market perspective; and
- Investors are unsure about how to incorporate gender into their process and analysis.
Just Good Investing was written to address both of these issues.
We conducted an analysis of our private debt portfolio over the past eleven years examining the relationship between gender diversity at the board and leadership level and financial performance. Our analysis revealed a strong relationship between gender diversity in leadership positions (senior management) and financial performance.
We also share practical guidance and tools for creating a gender inclusive investment strategy, developed from building our own gender-lens investment approach over the past 7 years.
Download the report and review the full quantitative methodology.
This work would not have been possible without the many individuals and institutions who have supported our gender equity work over the past seven years. A special thanks to The Shell Foundation and their partners Department for International Development (DFID) and United States Agency for International Development (USAID), The Wallace Global Foundation, Woodcock Foundation, several anonymous donors and the many investors who have encouraged our focus on gender.
