Marypat Thenell Smucker

Within the gender lens equity funds group, six funds utilize custom tracking indexes which incorporate WIL criteria. There are also several families of gender lens equity indexes, including a suite of global and regional Solactive Equileap indexes, several core MSCI women’s indexes, and two FTSE Russell women’s leadership indexes. There is also a collection of stand-alone gender lens equity indexes. Key stats for the gender lens indexes are found in the table below.

This table lists funds that are multi-cap or larger-cap, have relatively low investment minimums, and charge average fees. Most have launched since 2015, and they all utilize investment criteria centered on a WIL philosophy, typically combined with ESG screens. These introductory stats provide a short summary of investment criteria, fee info, investment style, number of holdings, and the percent of women’s representation on the portfolio management team. All gender lens equity funds (GLEFs) in our coverage universe employ investment criteria centered on women-in-leadership thresholds, and many have additional stated criteria on broad-based corporate gender metrics. Most of these funds utilize ESG screens. These are generally multi- and large-cap funds. According to Morningstar data on mutual funds and ETFs, 14% of all portfolio managers globally are women (11% in the U.S.), a figure which has not changed in the last decade. Among GLEFs, the available data shows that management teams are well ahead on this front with 51% female portfolio managers.