Gender-lens investing: Whats next?

Who is Suzanne Biegel?

Just 20 years ago, few people had heard the term “gender lens investing.” Today, interest in the concept is picking up pace, with growing numbers of investors and companies looking for ways to close the gender gap in areas such as finance, health and education.

Suzanne Biegel has been working in the field almost since the beginning – she remembers a time when much of her day was spent simply trying to convince people that women were worth investing in. Now, as founder of the consultancy Catalyst At Large and as senior gender lens investing adviser at the Wharton Business School, she is at the forefront of the quest to find ways to make money work harder for women and girls.

In 2015, Biegel founded the pilot initiative Women Effect, a hub for information and strategy around gender lens investing that is now part of the Wharton Social Impact Initiative. Along with her work at Catalyst and Wharton, her alma mater, she also acts as investment director for SPRING Accelerator, which partners with businesses to develop innovations that improve the lives of adolescent girls in the developing world, and is the founder of Women in Social Finance, a closed group of high-level women working in impact and responsible finance in the UK.

“2018 is the year of gender lens investing, it’s the year of so many things around gender equality – women’s economic advancement, looking at women as powerhouse markets, women coming to the floor as investors, using their voice,” she says.

On the sidelines of the World Economic Forum’s annual meeting at Davos, News Deeply spoke to Biegel about the language challenge, the trouble with data, and the importance of connecting people.

Women’s Advancement Deeply: What’s the best definition of ‘gender lens investing’ for someone who hasn’t heard the term? Suzanne Biegel: It is about integrating a financial analysis and a gender analysis to get to a better outcome.

That can mean starting with a gender agenda: “I want to fund women entrepreneurs because I understand there’s a lack of access to capital for women entrepreneurs.” And whether that’s Silicon Valley, high-tech, high-growth, or whether that’s a social entrepreneur, solving [issues of] women’s safety in Egypt.

The second starting point is products and services that benefit women and girls. That can be male- or female-led, but who’s got that product? Who’s got that ecommerce company in Rwanda that’s giving women and girls access to sexual health products?

The third is, where are women in the value chain of a company? Where are women producing raw materials all the way up through the whole supply chain? And where are women showing up as distributors?

We use investment as a tool and a way to spot opportunities.