{"id":39475,"date":"2023-11-22T12:44:18","date_gmt":"2023-11-22T17:44:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/?p=39475"},"modified":"2023-12-12T16:06:20","modified_gmt":"2023-12-12T21:06:20","slug":"investing-in-gender-equity-is-smart-investing","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/test.greenmoney.com\/2025\/investing-in-gender-equity-is-smart-investing\/","title":{"rendered":"Investing in Gender Equity is Smart Investing"},"content":{"rendered":"
>> Back to December 2023 Issue<\/a><\/div>\n

\"Joe<\/a>Gender lens investing in the United States was really an invention of the late, great Linda Pei and her business partner, Leslie Christian. These two pioneers founded FEMMX Financial Co., which launched the Women\u2019s Equity Fund in 1993. At the time, there was scant research backing their investment thesis \u2013 the first studies linking gender diverse corporate leadership with financial results were published by Catalyst in 2004 and 2007 \u2013 but Linda and Leslie believed that women\u2019s contribution to the bottom line would be measurable and accretive over time.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

I had a hunch that they were right. When I became President of Impax (then Pax World) in 2005, one of the first things I did was reach out to see whether they might be interested in partnering, or even selling their business. I had just finished reading <\/span>The Wealth and Poverty of Nations<\/span><\/i> by historian David E. Landes, in which he wrote: \u201cThe best clue to a nation\u2019s growth and development potential is the status and role of women.\u201d<\/em> I recall thinking that if gender equality contributes at the macro-economic level, it likely contributes at the micro-economic level as well. If it is good for countries, then it must be good for companies.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

Prior to joining Impax, I had already been involved in co-authoring, along with Julie Gorte and Nikki Daruwala, the Calvert Women\u2019s Principles \u2013 the first global code of conduct on how companies should treat, advance and empower women.<\/i><\/strong><\/p>\n

The United Nations, which had embraced David E. Landes\u2019 thesis that gender equality can help lift countries out of poverty, was so enamored that they adopted them as the UN Women\u2019s Empowerment Principles. I was later honored to co-chair the Leadership Group of the Women\u2019s Empowerment Principles for several years.<\/span><\/p>\n

Impax purchased FEMMX in 2006 and began offering what is today called the Impax Ellevate Global Women\u2019s Leadership Fund.<\/b> So far as we know, this was the very first strategy to apply a gender lens and today is one of the largest investment vehicles in the gender lens space.<\/span><\/p>\n

In 2014, in partnership with Sallie Krawcheck and Ellevate, we adopted a more systematic investment approach that we believed would better isolate the contribution that what we call the \u2018gender factor\u2019 can make to company performance. We hoped to make an apples-to-apples comparison between gender diverse companies and the broader market, and to prove that companies with greater gender equity outperform less enlightened competitors and the overall market over time. I believe we have met that burden of proof.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

In the meantime, those early, lonesome Catalyst studies are now bolstered by decades of research demonstrating that gender diversity and equity are correlated with stronger financial performance. In my view, the research at this point is beyond compelling; it is overwhelming. <\/span><\/p>\n

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