Six reflections from six years of investing in women
Sonia Jordan-Kirwan, our Head of Gender and Diversity, reflects on the success of gender-lens investing and how far it has come. She also gives an honest account of the challenges facing investors in confronting gender inequality and the steps they can take to help improve women’s economic prospects.
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1. We’ve changed how the investment system views women.
Back in 2018, when we launched our gender strategy, the impact of investment on women was not consistently considered in investment decisions. Today, focusing on women and gender is no longer a side issue or radical idea, but is front and centre when investors think about how their investments can make a positive difference.
We have an established framework and a common language to achieve better financial and social outcomes for women through investment. This brings everybody together with a shared understanding of what gender finance looks like. That’s huge. And it’s not just development finance institutions that are using the gender framework we pioneered; commercial investors are using it too, so the scale of what we can achieve is much greater. It means we’re moving closer to the point where gender-smart investing is the norm.
2. It's important to celebrate the small wins.
I wish I had realised sooner how important it is to celebrate the small wins. Global gender inequality is a vast challenge and bringing about change means being prepared to fight the status quo.
Change like this can be intimidating and it comes in stops and starts. In some ways, we have made huge progress. The 2X framework has been adopted by investors at a rate that even we were surprised by.
But some change is slower. Increasing women’s representation in the workforce or increasing access to services doesn’t happen overnight. While we’ve seen important uplifts, it’s important to celebrate the small changes achieved by each of our investee partners on the path to greater diversity and inclusion.
3. We need to improve collective data reporting.
Not just BII, but the whole industry. Along with FMO, the Dutch development bank, and the 2X Challenge, we developed a set of metrics to measure the impact of investment on women. This was an important step forward.
However, as an industry, we are not consistently and reliably tracking the important information that measures the impact of these investments. This means it is challenging to understand overall impact for women.
Anyone who has pioneered a new field knows that collecting meaningful data is one of the biggest challenges. You need it to be harmonised internationally, across institutions and reported regularly, but that takes time. There needs to be incentives and we need more buy-in – people need to see the value.
4. The biggest opportunities for gender-lens investing lie ahead.
Now that we’ve laid the groundwork and know what successful gender-lens investing looks like, we can really go for it. We want to push the limit of what is possible as an investor. We’re creating innovative investment structures and thinking about new partners we want to work with to do more.
But we need to adopt a very focused approach to every gender-lens deal. This includes finding those investments that will have the greatest impact for women per dollar invested. Frameworks and guidelines are just the start, the real opportunity comes from using them to improve women’s economic prospects.
We also have to push for gender equality across our whole portfolio so it becomes the norm, rather than a target for a few select companies.
5. The biggest challenges relate to societal norms and the economy.
In many of the countries where we operate, we are seeing a pushback against women’s rights and fewer women participating in the workforce, which is really concerning. At the same time, since the financial crash of 2008/9 we have been battling strong economic headwinds, especially in the countries where we invest.
Development finance institutions like us are counter-cyclical, which means we tend to invest more when the global economy is struggling. But we need other investors to join us, especially when the future is uncertain. We stand firm in our belief that shareholders have an important role to play in positively influencing outcomes for women.
6. Every job we create for a woman matters.
I spend a lot of time looking at the overarching strategy for gender-lens investing, including how we build effective frameworks and bring others along with us. This work makes a big difference to people’s lives. But above all else what motivates me is meeting women who have been employed or seen their business grow as a result of BII’s investment, particularly when that job or growth is in a traditionally male-dominated sector.
Every job we create has an individual woman and a family sitting behind it. That’s why this matters.
Find out more about our journey as a gender-lens investor in our latest report, Closing the gap: Lessons from six years of investing in women. It features examples of businesses we’ve partnered with across our portfolio, our achievements, and the lessons we’ve learned along the way.
