The third part ‘Care responsibilities in times of a pandemic’ will then focus on the importance of family-care policies, which can remove some of the barriers women face in their career development. The second part ‘Moving up the ladder’ will investigate the trends which mark other diversity indicators, namely the percentage of women at different levels of responsibility and equal remuneration. What caused this increase in the percentage of women on the board, and how can it drive change within corporations more broadly? The first part of this article ‘More women on boards, so what?’ will explore some of the trends and rationales around focusing on women on the board. Each flow represents the percentage of assessed companies which moved between brackets from one year to the next. The following flow charts show the proportion of companies according to the percentage of women on their board, and how the trend evolves over time. This has led to positive developments, as we see that the percentage of women on boards has increased across all regions over recent years. Women on the boardĬonsiderable attention has been directed towards the number of women at board level, and to a lesser extent, in executive positions. Including these companies in gender lens investing would therefore be an interesting perspective for the development of these funds. For example, a report published in 2019 looking into 61 companies listed on the Nairobi Securities Exchange found that 12% of these companies had women CEO’s, compared to only 7% of FTSE 100 companies and 7% of Fortune 500 companies9.
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The outlook for gender lens investing is geared to move beyond its current focus on large-cap companies and developed markets, to also set expectations on smallcap companies and in developing markets 8. Although this criterion poses obvious challenges, as for example in 2020 women made up nearly half of the employees of S&P 500 companies but only 6% of their CEOs 7, it is the first such fund and makes a strong case for more venture capital investment in women entrepreneurs. In November 2019, Fox Gestion d’Actifs, a subsidiary of Groupe Premium, launched its Valeurs Feminines Global Fund, which invests only in publicly-listed companies whose CEOs are women 6. This had a direct effect, as the number of companies with fewer than two women on the board dropped by 14% within five months 5. In 2018, BlackRock announced that it expected the companies it invested in to have at least two women on the board and urged the Russell 1000 companies with fewer than that to act on their lack of diversity. In 2017, Morgan Stanley encouraged analysts to include gender scores in their investments, while in 2018 the State Street Global Advisors announced that it would vote against all-male boards in the US, UK and Australia as of 2020.
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The push to integrate gender diversity in investment criteria has increased over the years: at least 15 new publicly traded gender lens equity funds have been launched since 2015. In 2019, total publicly available equity and fixedincome offerings in gender lens investing reached over USD 2.4 billion in asset-undermanagement 4. Financial initiativesįinancial initiatives are worth highlighting, as they demonstrate the development and progress made towards gender equality. As a result, most large-scale corporate and financial initiatives tend to still focus on mainstream gender metrics. However, the lack of data on other diversity indicators and how they intersect with gender has made it difficult for companies and investors to measure their performance and consistently identify gaps in the domain.
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In 2020, the discourse has shifted significantly from a focus on gender diversity towards diversity and inclusion more generally. These inequalities also disproportionately affect certain groups of women, depending on the intersections of gender with race, ethnicity, religion, class, ability, sexuality and other identity markers.
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Furthermore, women are over-represented in sectors which are most heavily hit by the pandemic, such as hospitality or the food services industries, further exacerbating inequalities. Women represent 39% of the global workforce but accounted for 54% of job losses as of May 2020 3. Based on past experience, economic slowdowns not only disproportionately affect women, but also trigger gender equality topics to slip down governmental and corporate agendas. In the face of the Covid-19 pandemic and economic crisis, efforts will have to be doubled if we are to avoid losing another 10 years to achieve gender equality 2. This prediction has been widely used as a shock therapy to push governments, NGOs, associations, investors and companies into action. According to the Global Gender Gap Report 2020 1, it will take another 100 years to achieve gender equality based on the current rate of progress.