Gender

International Women's Day: Adding Gender to Impact Investment Portfolios

International Women's Day: Adding Gender to Impact Investment Portfolios

As the world celebrates International Women’s Day this week, it is hard not to think of the progress and remaining challenges facing our global society in achieving gender equality. We have Malala Yousafzai and Hillary Clinton as examples of high-profile women leading their own movements, with the United Nations focusing on all women, with “Achieving gender equality and empowering all women and girls” as their fifth-ranking Sustainable Development Goal (SDG).  And – just as we see with most social issues – the conventional way of approaching positive change, like counting the number of women who show up to a hand-washing training, is not nearly adequate. International investors, who are already exploring innovative ways to solve large-scale environmental, agriculture, energy, and health issues, are also looking at how to bring impact investing to bear towards gender equality.