rotmanmagazine.ca / 83their board — or invest in companies who excel in certain areas.”
Men also feel strongly about a wide range of issues, says
VanderBrug, but they are more likely to say, ‘There are plenty of
other opportunities with lower risk.’ To be clear, women are not
not interested in the performance of their investments, she says;
they just don’t want that to be separated from their impact on
the world. “The fact is, women’s areas of interest present huge
opportunities, given what is happening more broadly with the
transition to a more sustainable economy.”
According to VanderBrug, behavioural insights will play a
key role in optimizing gender-lens investing going forward. “Part
of moving gender-lens investing forward involves asking, ‘Which
‘behavioural levers’ can be used to enable women to feel more
confident investing their money?’
Gender lens investors are not part of some ‘secret society’,
notes VanderBrug. “They are everyone from pension fund man-
agers to economic development banking professionals to foun-
dation executives. They also include lenders, angels and friends
with a chequing account.”
Influencing Global Supply Chains
Kathleen McLaughlin is another leader who is innovating to
improve gender equality. In her position as Chief Sustainabil-
ity Officer at Walmart, she works with business teams and the
Walmart Foundation to enhance the sustainability of global sup-
ply chains in food, apparel and general merchandise; to help cre-
ate economic opportunity for individuals and foster economic
growth; and to strengthen the resilience and cohesion of local
communities.
“Looking ahead, our biggest opportunity is to draw on our
unique capabilities — in collaboration with suppliers and other
partners — to create systemic change across the supply chain,
including how a wide variety of products are grown and made,
how they are transported and sold, and how we touch the lives
of people along the way,” she says. The goal is to ensure that
Walmart brings safe, affordable products to people in a way that
is sustainable for the planet and the people all along the product
supply chain.
McLaughlin and her team go about this in two principle
ways. First, by working with the Sustainability Index, a science-
based, third-party tool that was developed in collaboration
with universities, civil society and suppliers. “The Index pro-
vides visibility into the social and environmental practices and
outcomes for a large number of supply chains.” And second,
through special projects. “In both cases, we collaborate with sup-
pliers, NGOs, customers, governments and multilaterals to drive
change.” Walmart uses the Index with its suppliers in over 125
categories ranging from socks to salmon. Last year, in these cat-
egories, over 70 per cent of its product assortment came from
suppliers who participate in the Index.
In addition to working to help improve the sustainability
of individual products, empowering women is another priority
for Walmart — not just because it’s the right thing to do, but
“because it will make our business and our world stronger. The
majority of our 245 million customers are women, and they
control an estimated $20 trillion of annual consumer spending
globally. In our experience, when you lift women up, you lift up
families and entire communities and economies.”
About eight years ago, McLaughlin’s predecessor Sylvia
Matthews Burwell launched the Global Women’s Economic
Empowerment Initiative (WEE), which McLaughlin happily in-
herited. “The core idea is that as the world’s largest retailer, a
Walmart purchase order is an unbelievable source of develop-
ment capital.”
One aspect of WEE involves sourcing products from wom-
en-owned businesses. The Women’s Business Enterprise
National Council (WBENC) defines a woman-owned business
as ‘a business that is at least 51 per cent owned and operated
by a woman’. The Walmart team set out to source an incremen-
tal $20 billion worth of goods from businesses owned by women
in the U.S., and to double its sourcing from women-owned busi-
nesses in other markets.