Gender Equality

“Women belong in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.”- Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Challenges

Equality is premised on equal treatment, opportunities, rights, and access. Women have long been marginalized across the globe, and while some progress has been made like legal rights and anti-discrimination policies, there is still a long way to go. Gender inequality is direct and indirect, but it is everywhere. This integrated and systemic injustice affects women across a wide range of social issues such as healthcare, finance, and education. The investment theme Gender Equality looks beyond the bare minimum of equality in the form of security and seeks to combat gender discrimination in the workplace.

Gender Representation in Leadership Positions

Women are underrepresented in high-paid positions and overrepresented in low-paid positions (U.S Dept. Of Labor, 2021). This results in very few women in leadership roles. Gender disparity in leadership is evident all the way up the corporate ladder and across various industries (McKinsey, 2021).

Gender Disparity in Promotion

Women face barriers climbing the career ladder: from early gender biases influencing education pathways to stereotypes about what is regarded as ‘suitable’ work for women. In the workplace, women face severe limitations on upward mobility in the form of promotions and mentorship (McKinsey, 2019).

Gender Pay Gap

The most glaring form of gender inequality in the workplace is the gender pay gap. Women are paid significantly less than men for the same job roles and workload – this is even worse for women of color (U.S Dept. Of Labor, 2021). The pay gap can be found in almost every profession. Right now, the highest paying and growing industries are in STEM where women make up less than a third of the workforce (AAUW, 2020).

The Motherhood Penalty

This term refers to the general policies and trends that oppress and disadvantage mothers in the workplace. Women who take a year off from work face challenges in returning the workplace and experience a motherhood pay gap (AAUW, 2020). The workplace culture suggests women must choose between motherhood or a career (Pew Research Center, 2021).

TIME TO TAKE ACTION

FLIT’s solution and gender equality

Investment Rationale

The main disadvantage of discrimination from a business perspective is missing out on key talents. There is plenty of evidence that talent is not differentially distributed by gender, age, or geography. Diversity brings value also by bringing different experiences and perspectives together, leading to better decision-making. We firmly believe companies with equal representation at the board and management level, gender pay equity, transparency on gender diversity, and proactive gender goals and targets will overperform their peers. There is already strong evidence that diverse companies perform financially better, and we believe institutional investors will also increasingly favor companies who score better on gender equality targets.

Impact Metrics

There are many standards approaches to solving the water crisis. Across all these approaches is the common commitment to UN SDG #6 to “ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all. Impact targets are best achieved with plans, metrics, and achievement dates to allow the clean water mission to be tracked. FLIT is here to help you invest your resources into companies pledging to solve the water crisis and actually doing it.

Portfolio Spotlight

Etsy, Inc. (ETSY). Etsy hosts one of the largest platforms for e-commerce, offering handmade and vintage items, art, clothing and more. Etsy performed well on gender equality in fact, women make up 44% of the board of directors and more than 50% of the executive management team. The company also holds a Mentorship Circle Program, an engineering sponsorship program for women and minorities. They go beyond just setting diversity targets, they integrate diversity, equity, and inclusion achievements into executive compensation. They also conduct regular pay-gap assessments and in 2020, analysis found no unexplained pay gaps adverse to women or non-white employees. Etsy is a shining star in our portfolio.

Benefits of FLIT’s Expert Curation

Our team at FLIT has researched hundreds of investment funds and companies to curate a portfolio that we believe embodies gender equality in multiple sectors. Each company is screened for multiple metrics, and we provide this data to users to ensure you can invest in line with your values. Unfortunately, many funds are promoted as gender-equality-focused but only in their name. For example, the largest “Gender equality fund” only supported women 20% of the time they faced a vote. Using our selected metrics, we are confident that we have chosen the best-performing funds and companies whose intentions and actions are in line with our values and yours.

TIME TO TAKE ACTION

Solutions beyond investing

Individual:
What can you do?

Challenge your gender bias – take the Harvard Gender-Career IAT to discover your implicit biases
Vote whenever you can and vote female wherever you can. If female candidates are not an option, opt for the best feminist male candidate
Donate, support or volunteer for a nonprofit organization advocating for change. Check out for example: Girls who Code, The Malala Fund and She should Run
Champion for-profit companies that are empowering women and contributing to achieve Gender Equality. Buy their products or use their services, work for them, and invest in them

Beyond:
What can we do together?

Reform policy, infrastructure, and social mechanisms that create and maintain inequality. E.g., abolish the motherhood penalty.
Adopt gender quotas, enforcing female representation.
Commit to gender policies, participation monitoring, and pay gap reports
This looks different at the local, national and global levels. Read our white paper to learn more.