Investing in Women (IW) is pleased to be working with the Global Impact Investing Network (GIIN) again in support of mainstreaming gender lens investing (GLI) in Southeast Asia.
A global convenor of impact investors, the GIIN focuses on reducing barriers to impact investment with the goal of increasing its scale to fund solutions to key challenges around the world.
Leveraging its established presence and reputation in the region, the GIIN aims to drive continued responsible industry growth and deepen institutions’ engagement with GLI, an investing strategy which incorporates gender considerations throughout the investment process to make investment decisions that lead to better gender equality and economic outcomes.
Gender is a core component of the GIIN’s impact investing initiatives, with an established GLI Knowledge Hub for its members and gender lens performance indicators integrated in its impact measurement and management tools. The GIIN previously partnered with IW to publish The Landscape of Impact Investing in Southeast Asia report, the first detailed analysis of impact investing in the region. It also collaborated with regional partners to convene prominent members of the business, philanthropic and investing community to discuss opportunities to advance GLI.
In recent years, the GIIN has broadened its focus to institutional asset owners to underscore the relevance of impact as a competitive driver and as a tool for supporting local development. As part of its work with IW, it has integrated GLI-related questions in its annual Investor Survey to generate market insights that can be used to track shifts in perception and adoption of GLI. It will issue and disseminate briefs to highlight best practices, trends, and learnings.
Since 2016, IW has played a catalytic role in increasing access to capital available to SMEs that disproportionately benefit women in Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam. Through its Gender Lens Investing workstream, IW is working to create more demand for funds that are investing with a gender lens by engaging capital providers. IW also works with local impact investors to test innovative financial solutions for small but growing women-owned or led businesses and continues to deploy capital to gender transformative funds through the IW Fund, in partnership with Australian Development Investments.