Four Takeaways from the 2021 Virtual Gender Smart Investing Summit
After attending the incredible first Gender Smart Investing Summit in London in 2018, I was skeptical that a virtual format for the February 2021 summit themed “crisis as catalyst” could deliver a similarly meaningful experience. I was proven wrong! With 500 delegates from 35 countries participating over two sessions to accommodate time zones, there was rich conversation, deep insights, and a smattering of powerful musicians and poets. I left inspired to deepen my work and commitment to increasing the engagement of women in all levels of economic activity – as investors, founders, senior leaders, product designers, and beyond. Here are just four of the high-level areas in which I deepened my knowledge and that stood out as particularly important from this year’s summit.
1. A gender lens approach should be viewed in terms of relationships to power – and absolutely must be intersectional
That is, increasing gender equity in finance must be examined through the intersecting lenses of gender, race, class, sexual orientation, physical ability, and other individual characteristics and social identities that influence discrimination and disadvantage via where power is centered. A black woman’s experience will differ from a white woman’s and from that of a queer latinx. The black lives matter movement highlighted the vast and deeply embedded social injustices experienced by black people, and when we examine one type of injustice we simply cannot ignore others. We must apply a unified approach to disrupting toxic power dynamics that lead to systematic discrimination, or we risk merely shifting those points of discrimination rather than moving toward equality.
There is significant research on the importance and economic advantage to diversity in capital allocation and in developing successful businesses. So why do women and people of color combined manage only 1.3% of the $70 Trillion financial industry? And why do female founders receive less than 3% of startup funds (which declined in 2020)? We know that it is not about a lack of skills, talent, ideas, or tools. I learned, for example, that accelerator programs – meant to increase knowledge and tools and lead to increased VC funding – can actually widen the funding gap for female entrepreneurs. What specific behaviors are driving this? We all need to do the individual and collective work of recognizing and confronting our unconscious biases and power dynamics – in all aspects of our lives, work, investments, decision-making structures, and capital placement. And we need to vote for women, invest in them, vote proxies and generally make more conscious and strategically anti-biased spending, investing, and hiring decisions.
2. RISK must be emphasized as a key driver of the gender smart argument
There are various lenses through which we can argue that addressing the gender gap in investing as important. The social impact argument is certainly clear, but the justice argument alone will not motivate the results we need to ensure that it doesn’t take 99.5 years to reach equality in investing. What we learned from the climate change movement, which has gained more ground and garnered a sense of urgency, is that defining the importance of climate change in terms of risk is what really moved the needle.
Again, we have the data to show that diversity leads to better business outcomes. Therefore not investing in companies that demonstrate this diversity in their leadership, product design and company policies runs a significant risk of lower shareholder returns and poorer economic outcomes. Additionally, Gender Based Violence is a proven systemic risk to government stability and markets, and Covid-19 has highlighted the burden of unpaid labor that women disproportionately bear – with female attrition from the workforce creating massive economic risks.
To paraphrase one summit participant, we need to start with the problems in communities and how to solve them via capital deployment, not start with the capital and how it needs to be deployed.
3. There are many decision points at which to employ an intersectional gender lens
Diversifying asset managers, supporting more female entrepreneurs, evaluating the biased nature of product design, gender policies in the workplace… they all have a role to play in leveling the playing field and improving financial outcomes. Many of the gender smart investing tools available provide indicators and benchmarks in each of these areas.
One example shared that I found interesting (and disturbing!) to illustrate how every product is gendered, even those we think are “gender neutral,” was the fact that more women are injured and killed in car accidents because testing and design is done on men. And we know that policies in our workplaces, institutions and governments are not working as well for women, as we witness a massive “SheCession” due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
4. We still need to do a better job of engaging men
This largely speaks for itself, but women can’t make strides without our male allies. While some of these wonderful male allies participated in the summit, there were not nearly enough of them, with the vast majority of the participants identifying as women.
There is of course much, much more to say here in each of these areas and beyond. I encourage you to explore the resources on the Gender Smart website. Specifically, there are many tools available to those looking to make the arguments to their colleagues, institutionalize gender smart strategies, set targets and measure results. Thank you to Suzanne Biegel, Darian Heyman, and the entire Summit team not only an incredible event even amidst a pandemic, but for continuing to push this movement forward and keep us all inspired along the way.
I had the opportunity to attend the GSIS on behalf of Linked Foundation, who is a supporter of the Summit.
