Summary
This report analyses the progress made by gender investors in the past year in order to better understand how private sector efforts are helping to bridge gender equity gaps.
Around the world, over two billion women are denied access to equal economic opportunities. A 2023 World Economic Forum study put the financing gap for women entrepreneurs at USD 1.7 trillion while a UN report estimates an additional USD 360 billion investment is needed per year to achieve gender equality.
There are solutions to addressing this gap, and impact investing plays a fundamental role by providing capital for these solutions. This research study is based on the 2024 Impact Investor Survey which captures reliable data from 305 organisations across 39 countries. It focuses on impact investors who allocated at least 30% of their impact assets under management (AUM) to women-owned or -led investees, referred to in the report as gender investors. It examines gender investors’ motivations, challenges, and benefits from adopting a gender lens such as impact and financial returns – highlighting the strong business case for pursuing gender lens investing.
The report is part of the Global Impact Investor Network’s (GIIN) 2024 market intelligence series, and is developed with support from Investing in Women. It is originally published on the GIIN website.
Highlights
Some of the key findings are:
- Investment growth: Ninety percent of gender investors met or exceeded their financial expectations, with 97% achieving their impact targets.
- Strong performance: Seventy-five percent of gender investor respondents reported that the benefit of adopting GLI was the ability to achieve greater impact, with just over half (51%) reporting the benefits of strong impact results and better financial performance.
- Geographic breakdown: While 42% of gender investors focused on emerging markets, these regions account for only 18% of total AUM compared to developed markets, which attracted 66% of impact AUM from a similar percentage of investors (48%).
- SDG alignment: Gender investors target all 17 Sustainable Development Goals, not just gender equality and prioritize sectors like energy, infrastructure and housing, with 64% who planned to increase allocations.
