I en ny artikel giver Merrill Lynch 4 bud på, hvordan du som investor kan være en del af at hjælpe med at ændre status quo gennem investering i ligestilling mellem kønnene.
Der er sket meget fremgang på ligestillingsfronten de senere år, men så længe at der så stort gab mellem lønninger og repræsentation i ledelsen, er der fortsat mere at gøre.
Et stigende antal mennesker er ved at indse, at investering i virksomheder, der understøtter kvinders fulde inklusion, kan gavne deres porteføljer såvel som samfundet. Faktisk viser forskning fra Wharton School, at offentlige markedsaktiver under forvaltning investeret til støtte for ligestilling mellem kønnene – kaldet “gender lens investing” – oversteg $4,8 milliarder i 2019, mere end en fordobling af beløbet fra året før.
Så hvad er gender lens investing?
“Det er den bevidste integration af kønsbaserede data i finansiel analyse med forventning om at finde yderligere muligheder og afdække og afbøde potentielle risici,” siger Jackie VanderBrug, leder af Sustainable and Impact Investment Strategy i Chief Investment Office for Merrill og Bank of America Private Bank.
Og her er, hvad du som investor kan gøre ved det:
1. Businesses founded, run or funded by women. VanderBrug notes that while more women are starting businesses, the share of funding they receive remains low. According to Crunchbase, only 2.3% of venture capital funding went to women-led startups, while 89% went to male-led teams (and the remainder to male-female teams).
2. Companies whose policies encourage equal pay and opportunity. More and more companies are taking steps to support full inclusion of all employees. For instance, a company might choose to drop sexist stereotypes from its advertising, provide family leave, review promotion processes or offer STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) tuition reimbursements, knowing that women receive a premium for working in STEM (salaries are 105% higher than those for women in non-STEM fields) but are more likely than men to work in the “STEM periphery” — roles in which they can apply STEM skills and expertise but are lower-paying than traditional STEM occupations.
3. Companies that make gender equality — from top management to the ground floor — a priority. According to VanderBrug, companies that exhibit greater gender diversity not only among senior leadership but also in the rest of the workforce may experience better performance, reduced turnover and higher employee engagement, all predictors of higher earnings. She points to data from McKinsey showing that gender-diverse companies are more likely to outperform their peers, a distinction even more pronounced for ethnically diverse companies.
4. Companies that produce products or services that are heavily weighted toward benefiting women. VanderBrug points to women’s health and the care economy as places of innovation, but also to areas such as computer science, including the efforts of one company to create software that is free of gender biases. She also notes that women’s accumulated financial assets are rising faster than men’s and could reach $93 trillion by 2023.
Læs mere her:
https://www.ml.com/articles/practical-gender-lens-investing-approaches.html#financial-research-and-insights
