Gender Lens Investing: Best Practices from Canadian Practitioners

Thursday, February 1, 2024
5:00 PM 7:00 PM

Conestoga College, Blue Room 299 Doon Valley Drive Kitchener, ON, N2G 4M4 Canada (map)

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EVENT RECAP

On February 1st, 2024 over 50 people – including local incubators and accelerators, students, academics, foundations and NGOs - gathered at Conestoga College School of Business at Doon Campus in Kitchener, Ontario to discuss gender lens investing (GLI). In this CAFIID event moderated by GLI consultant Katie Turner, we heard from Kristina Kuznetsova (Sarona Asset Management), Nicole Heaney (MEDA) and Tanya Staples (Conestoga College) about their GLI work. Key takeaways from this excellent discussion include:

Using a "gender lens" means understanding the needs, challenges, and opportunities faced by women and men and developing customized strategies in order to promote gender equity and ensure full participation in economic and social systems.

There are fantastic opportunities to share and apply global GLI best practices to the Canadian context. For example, MEDA’s Gender Equality Mainstreaming Framework (GEM) is a practical and publicly available tool to assess the integration of gender within a company and develop concrete strategies to transform them to be more gender equitable while supporting business growth and impact. MEDA and Sarona have successfully used GEM across Latin America, Africa, and Asia, but it can be applied to any geography.

Sometimes companies hesitate to begin integrating gender into their business models because they don’t know where to start. Disaggregating data by gender is one place to begin. For example, financial institutions that disaggregate their data by gender can understand their portfolios better – i.e. non performing loans separated by men versus women owned companies - which allows them to make better decisions.

Only 15% of financial advisors in Canada are women, despite evidence that women prefer to invest with women, and even though women control approximately $2.2 trillion, an amount expected to increase to $4 trillion by 2028. Research is being done to determine industry best practices for better inclusion of women and overall diversity in the entire financial service industry. The development of policies and procedures designed to eliminate barriers for women, will serve to enrich business outcomes both economic and social.

We discussed critical questions regarding the distribution of global investment capital to women, emphasizing the need for systemic changes to integrate gender considerations into the investment process as a standard practice. We also talked about the risks of not considering gender in our investments.

Thanks to everyone who joined us for this fantastic event! We all agreed that these types of public discussions should happen more often as they are key to making GLI investing more accessible and inclusive for everyone.

See the presentation deck here

INVITATION:

Gender lens investing (GLI) is a subset of impact investing that integrates a gender analysis into investment decision-making in order to advance gender equality. GLI currently has approximately $20 billion under management and continues to gain momentum based on results which demonstrate that supporting women as entrepreneurs, leaders, employees and consumers will increase gender equity, reduce poverty and promote more inclusive and robust economic growth. GLI answers questions such as:

How can we ensure women receive a greater share of global investment capital?
What are the most effective ways to structure this capital in a way that meets the needs of women?

This session will share GLI approaches used by three Kitchener-Waterloo based organizations - Sarona Asset Management, Mennonite Economic Development Associates (MEDA) and Conestoga College - who are working across Asia, Africa and Latin America and Canada. By sharing specific examples of what GLI looks like in different contexts, we hope to create awareness about this growing field and how it contributes to increased gender equality.

We hope you can join us during this inspiring conversation!

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Speakers

Nicole Heaney currently works at MEDA as a Senior Technical Specialist in the Impact and Knowledge Management department. With over nine years of experience working in international development, Ms. Heaney supports MEDA interventions by designing result frameworks, ongoing monitoring and by conducting learning and evaluation studies. Ms. Heaney also has comprehensive knowledge of data collection and visualization tools. Ms. Heaney has a keen interest in Gender Lens Investing (GLI) and is heavily involved in reporting MEDA’s impact results, both in relation to MEDA’s international programming and impact investments. Ms. Heaney is a graduate from the International Development program at Humber College, as well she earned a Bachelor of Arts degree specializing in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Waterloo. She also holds a certification in Program Evaluation from Wilfred Laurier University. Her previous international development experience includes working in a Liberian refugee camp, delivering workshops on refugee rights and promoting reconciliation initiatives within the camp.

Kristina Kuznetsova is responsible for Impact Measurement and Management within Sarona Asset Managment, a global impact investing firm. With ten years of experience in project management and M&E, Kristina is a strong advocate for using data and technology to drive positive social impact. Prior to Sarona, she served as the Deputy Country Director for MEDA Ukraine. In this capacity, she led the impact team and contributed to the successful management of a $20 million initiative benefiting approximately forty thousand farmers in Southern Ukraine. Before that, Kristina worked as a Manager at Datalab Argo, specializing in the development and distribution of software for farm management. She holds the MSc degree from the University of Bologna, Italy.

Tanya Staples is a Financial Planning Professor, Conestoga College. Tanya has eleven years' experience in the academic field as a successful financial planning professor and CFP professional. A dedicated professor having provided professional guidance and technical education to the minds of 1000's of future financial planners, developed curriculum, and engaged industry in education. A skilled researcher enthusiastic about supporting advancements in personal financial planning. A published author, successful grant writer, conference, and journal reviewer. Engaged in several international research projects related to gender equity and income sustainability through the Personal Financial Planning PhD Program at Kansas State University. An active Committee Member for FP Canada’s Planning Assumption Guidelines and a Taskforce Member for the Canadian Centre for Women’s Empowerment (CCFWE). Prior to a career in academia, Professor Staples spent 10+ years in the wealth industry in various senior positions.