Parallelle Finance

Gender Lens Investing

Marypat Thenell Smucker

Investing with an LGBTQI Lens

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Environmental, social, and governance (ESG) investors are placing a growing focus on how corporations address diversity and inclusion. As part of these efforts, LGBTQI lens investing seeks to spotlight issues of sexual orientation and gender identity such as LGBTQI rights, equality, and representation in leadership.

While a recent landmark US Supreme Court ruling protects LGBTQI workers from discrimination at workplaces with 15 or more employees, many areas still need attention, from corporate healthcare and family leave benefits to workplace culture and safety.

The above is a excerpt from a piece by Marypat Thenell Smucker featured on TheImpactivate.com.

Continue reading at THEImpactivate.com

 

Q4 2020 Overview – A Call to Action: Aligning Gender Lens Investing and ESG

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Gender lens investing (GLI) is a thematic environmental, social, and governance (ESG) strategy that is inspired by women in leadership (WIL) and related gender equality criteria.

The primary publicly traded GLI equity funds available to individual investors include 12 global and 16 regional funds that together closed out 2020 with US$2.67 billion in assets under management (AUM). As a whole, they weathered the year’s economic storms well, with only one fund closing and three new ones launching.

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Applying a Gender Lens to Affordable Housing

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In the midst of a widespread US housing shortage, affordable housing is constrained in cities of all sizes—an issue made worse by the economic impact of the COVID-19 pandemic.

While men are more likely to experience homelessness, inadequately housed women face unique challenges that highlight other gendered inequities. Yet to incorporate a gender lens into US housing investments in a way that avoids discriminatory parameters, investors may need to turn their focus to building and preserving housing that meets the needs of low-income families more generally.

The above is a excerpt from a piece by Marypat Thenell Smucker featured on TheImpactivate.com.

Continue reading at THEImpactivate.com

 

Gender Lens Investing: Diverse Corporate Leadership Outperforms

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A widely documented body of research has demonstrated that companies with higher levels of women in leadership (WIL) have superior performance in several areas, including higher returns on capital, better productivity, and higher stock price performance. During the initial years after the financial crisis of 2008-9, financial and economic research established the positive performance impact of female participation at the board and senior management levels of large corporations. Since then, a number of studies have consistently shown the financial and performance benefits of gender diversity in corporate leadership – and have demonstrated that companies who lag on diverse leadership also lag in performance. The following is an overview of key studies in this area.

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Gender Lens Equity Funds: Key Stats

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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. Many employ internal WIL tracking indexes. Solactive Equileap is the main provider of external WIL indexes, built from a universe of developed market stocks with market caps of over $2.0 billion. According to the latest Morningstar data on mutual funds and ETFs, 14% of all portfolio managers globally are women and 11% in the U.S., a figure that has not budged in many years. In the gender lens sector, the available data shows that management teams are well ahead on this front, with 48% female portfolio managers.

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