Join us for Getting Gender Smart: Impact Investing with a Gender Lens in March 2019
It’s impossible not to notice that society is grappling with issues related to gender and the unique experiences women face around the world at this time. Thankfully, it’s not all bad news and hand-wringing – we’re seeing an acknowledgement of the amazing opportunity in front of us to develop strategies to further unlock the potential of women and girls. If you are looking for numbers to bolster this standpoint, consider the following:
- Women-led small and medium enterprises (SMEs) worldwide face a $1.4 trillion shortfall in access to credit despite women anecdotally having lower non-performing loan rates than men.
- According to a McKinsey study, closing the gender labor gap could add $28 trillion, or 26%, to annual global GDP in 2025.
- The female economy represents a market more than twice the size of India and China combined. By 2028, female consumers will control around $15 trillion of global consumer spending. That means the female economy could be considered the world’s largest emerging market.
To take advantage of these opportunities for economic growth and great gender equality, we need to use all the tools in our tool belt, and one of those tools is investment.
We’re happy to see that investors and philanthropists are increasingly considering how to integrate a gender lens into their investment strategy – whether this involves ensuring women have greater representation on boards and in leadership positions, bolstering female entrepreneurs, supporting products and services that better serve women and girls, or efforts to align with UN Sustainable Development Goal #5: Achieve gender equality and empower all women and girls.
But how does one move from awareness of the potential of a gender lens investment approach to action?
In answer to that question, CASE is thrilled to announce a new 2-day intensive training for investors and their advisors as they navigate the world of gender lens investing. Getting Gender Smart: Impact Investing with a Gender Lens is designed to help participants develop tangible strategies and practice to effectively integrate gender into all stages of their investment practice. We are excited to host this training in March 2019 in beautiful Durham, North Carolina on Duke University campus.
The training is co-designed and co-led by CASE’s own faculty director, Cathy Clark, a global leader in the impact investing space, and Suzanne Biegel, one of the recognized pioneers on gender lens investing. We’re thrilled our Getting Gender Smart training program will follow the Gender-Smart Investing Summit in London this November, where participants can develop relationships and participate in the global field-building around gender lens investing. To carry that work forward, our Getting Gender Smart training will get practical and tactical for investors and advisors – delivering a curated set of tools, case studies, and resources so investors and advisors can apply a gender lens to their investment practice immediately.
Want to join us? Find out more information about the training components and our esteemed program leads at www.bit.ly/gendersmart. Sign up by October 31 to take advantage of deepest discounts on program registration.