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governance (ESG) considerations into corporate interactions
for institutional investors was a notable milestone, pairing the
expertise of the largest money management firm in the world
and the oldest shareholder engagement advocacy group.”
Secondly, a new type of investor has emerged in recent
years: The impact investor, who considers the social impact of
their investment alongside the calculation of risk and return.
“The convergence of these two trends is driving innovation in
investment strategy and capital markets, and as the shift accel-
erates over the next decade, the use of gender factors will grow
with it,” says VanderBrug.
A gender lens might seem like an obvious tool for an impact
investor, but many early social impact finance pioneers didn’t see
it that way. As far as they were concerned, their focus on things
like poverty and education already supported women.
“Back in 2008, I was working with a team at the Criterion
Institute to better understand the link between female philan-
thropists and impact investors” she explains. “At the time, we felt
that the philanthropic world and the world of impact investing
were very separate — but that bridging them could create great
value.”
The problem VanderBrug et al. wanted to solve was this:
How could they get female philanthropists to bring their exper-
tise and interests to the emerging impact investing space? She
and her colleagues started talking to these philanthropists about
the idea, and right away they asked a question that the team
couldn’t answer: ‘What will the impact of these investments be
on women and girls?’
“Our inability to provide a clear answer led us to focus on
mapping-out an entirely new sub-field in financial services,” she
says. When VanderBrug and her team started talking to early
impact investors and traditional investors, virtually all of them
said the same thing: ‘You can’t do this. You don’t have any data’;
or ‘If you do this, you will lose money — and even if you don’t lose
money, it won’t make a difference’. “Suffice to say, there was not
a lot of momentum behind our efforts”, she says.
The team recognized that, to define ‘gender-lens investing’
as a new field, they needed to get some academic rigour behind
them. “So, we started working with [Rotman School Professor]
Sarah Kaplan to get the ball rolling.” One of the first articles the
duo wrote was for the Stanford Social Innovation Review [“The
Rise of Gender Capitalism,” available online] — and it helped
to define this emerging field. However, even after that, things
didn’t improve.
“As soon as we said the words ‘gender lens’, investors be-
lieved that we were taking half of the population off the table,
and that this approach was therefore limiting.” She and her team
argued that a gender lens allows investors to see the realities and
the needs of women and men, and that this would make them
better investors. “Our job was to shift the view of a gender lens
away from being limiting to being something that helps you see
new opportunities.”
VanderBrug notes that there are many different types of
lenses that help to improve peoples’ vision, and likewise, there
are different ways to approach gender-lens investing. “In our
work, we focus on three approaches: improving access to capital;
promoting equity along the entire value chain; and creating prod-
ucts and services that drive gender equality.”
In her experience, financial services have not tradition-
ally worked very well for women — or been marketed well to
them. For one thing, in her research over the past decade, she
has found that women are disproportionately interested in the
impact of their investments. “One-third of female investors say
they want to make investments that have both financial returns
and positive social environmental impact.” And yet surprisingly,
many of these women have yet to act on this interest. “This as-
pirational gap presents significant opportunities,” notes Vander-
Brug. “Women tell us that they want to focus on issues that they
feel strongly about. It might be supporting female entrepreneurs,
education for women globally, or something to do with the en-
vironment. Some proactively avoid or embrace certain types of
companies — for instance, those who don’t have any women onFinancial services have not traditionally been marketed well to women.