Editorial: growing gender lens investing in emerging markets

ABSTRACT

The rapid scaling up of all forms of sustainable finance has become a priority of the international community. This task is especially crucial for gender lens investing (GLI), whose growth in low- and middle-income countries—though dynamic, innovative, and gaining momentum—remains too slow, fragmented, and Northern-driven, not only in terms of the origin of capital but also in its design and implementation. This special issue of multidisciplinary papers contributes to pushing the frontiers of GLI growth forward in five areas: the role and scope of GLI; the importance of the care economy; GLI implementation strategies; Southern-led, women-led capital mobilization; and the interactions of gender and performance in investee firms. Driven by reciprocal scholar-practitioner partnerships, future research on the growth of gender lens investing in emerging markets should be Southern directed, methodologically plural, anchored in open data, and actionable in real time.

KEYWORDS:

• Gender lens investing
• emerging markets
• Africa
• Latin America
• care economy

1. Introduction

With less than eight years to go to 2030, the target date for the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals campaign and following ambitious net-zero goals announced by private and public institutions at COP26, the rapid scaling up of all forms of sustainable finance has become an important priority for the international community. This task is especially crucial for gender lens investing (GLI), whose growth in low- and middle-income countries—though dynamic, innovative, and gaining momentum—remains too slow, fragmented, and Northern-driven, not only in terms of the origin of capital but also in its design and implementation. The challenge facing GLI is to achieve the scope and depth of impact necessary to empower and improve the lives of the very large numbers of women in developing economies who are coping with the combined negative effects of the pandemic, climate change, and patriarchy.

This overview paper introduces the special issue by underscoring the urgency of GLI’s growth, describing the evolving concept of gender lens investing, highlighting innovative scaling-up efforts by the field, and identifying barriers to its further growth for impact. A key constraint is the marginalization of the voices and knowledge of actors in the Global South. This paper goes on to summarize the contributions of each of the papers collected for this special issue and then outlines future research directions, arguing that, in the years ahead, knowledge production in the GLI space must be, and can be, more Southern driven, methodologically pluralistic, committed to open data, and resolutely actionable.

2. The purposes of the special issue

This special issue has three purposes. It aims to:

1. Highlight leading-edge analysis, products and vehicles that are showing the way forward in growing gender lens investing in emerging markets;

2. Contribute to the construction of a vibrant, independent, action-oriented, and multidisciplinary body of knowledge on the theory and practice of growing gender lens investing in emerging markets; and

3. Encourage increased engagement in this knowledge-production effort by scholars, investment professionals, and policymakers working in private and public institutions based in the Global South.

3. The urgency of growing gender lens investing

The COVID-19 pandemic has amplified gender inequalities. Women are overrepresented in the informal sector, making it more difficult for them to safeguard against shocks. Also overrepresented in sectors most affected by COVID-19 lockdowns, women are bearing an even more unequal burden for care work (Grantham et al. 2021). And gendered norms—defined and sustained by patriarchy— that disadvantage women may have been strengthened during the pandemic. Alarmingly, studies show that gender-based violence has intensified; it is the shadow epidemic (see, for example, Martinez Restrepo et al. 2020). At the same time, women are disproportionally affected by the impact of climate change and may not gain equally in new economic opportunities emerging in a green economy. The climate emergency now engulfing the world demands that the scaling and implementation of sustainable finance aimed at empowering women be accelerated as rapidly as possible. Societies must reshape their capital markets for financial tools to power the transition to inclusive and sustainable development now, not later.

Faster growth of GLI funds and other vehicles and their investee businesses in emerging markets can help economically empower millions of women—as investors, entrepreneurs, employees, suppliers, and customers—to build more sustainable lives for themselves and their families. However, to transform the lives of women in the Global South, such growth must not only be accelerated; it must also become smarter in achieving meaningful income and empowerment gains for women. And for that to happen, GLI in emerging markets must be driven by the actors who best understand the complex needs on the ground—the asset owners and managers, company founders, employees, researchers, and policymakers based in the Global South itself (LaFrance et al. 2021).

Growing GLI will not be easy. Most current prospects for the world economy are gloomy. For example, the World Bank (2022) warns that, in the near term at least, global economic growth will decelerate, furthering global inequalities (see also Wilkes and Strohecker 2021). New variants of the COVID virus continue to spread, inflation is taking hold, and debt levels are skyrocketing. After facing down the pandemic, joblessness and extreme weather, governments’ fiscal space is sorely limited. In this context, the importance of mobilizing and deploying private capital for sustainable development in emerging markets has never been greater. This is as true for gender lens investing as it is for other forms of sustainable finance. Still, there are grounds for optimism, particularly in the dynamism and innovation of GLI itself.

4. Recent trends in gender lens investing

Recent trends illustrate these characteristics. One important trend is that the concept of gender lens investing itself continues to evolve. Most investment vehicles, products, and programs in the GLI space in emerging markets focus on placing capital into women-owned or -led small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), companies with safe and inclusive workplaces, or firms whose products or services benefit women and girls. Other GLI efforts aim to mainstream gender equality into the policies and practices of development finance institutions and impact investment funds. Still others take an even broader view, seeking to transform the way money and markets are used to reduce the manifestations of gender inequalities, including gender-based violence (see Anderson and Miles 2015; Maheshwari et al. 2019).

It is well-understood by GLI thought leaders and practitioners that intersectionality shapes the needs and potential of women in low- and middle-income countries. The effects of gender intersect with other factors, including income, education, geography, race and ethnicity, culture, language, and more. All forms of impact investing are also affected by local levels of contextual fragility and conflict (see, for example, Yadav, Reddy, and Thukral 2021). However, one dimension in emerging markets that has been less explored, at least in the public domain, is sexual identity. To be sure, in some parts of the Global South, same-sex and transgendered lifestyles are criminalized, making this challenging terrain where broader evidence, advocacy and policy change are required. Nonetheless, as GLI evolves in the years ahead, there is a question about the extent to which the field is willing and able to move beyond its traditional conceptual framework of the male-female heterosexual binary to serve the needs of all citizens facing gendered marginalization.

A second trend worth noting is the steady growth of GLI in emerging markets over the past five years. In global market terms, gender lens investing in emerging markets is modest in size, estimated to be $15 to $20 billion. Members of the 2X Challenge—a collaborative of bilateral development finance institutions (DFIs) and multilateral development banks (MDBs), together with private financial institutions and think tanks—currently aim to mobilize commitments from public and private actors totaling $15 billion to finance women entrepreneurs in low-income and middle-income countries. Table 1 shows the $11 billion in commitments made by 2X Challenge members during 2018-2020, by region, with more than half of these funds earmarked for Latin America and Africa combined.

Table 1. Regional Allocations by 2X Challenge Members, 2018-2020.

Rank	Region	Commitments(USD Millions)
1	Latin America and the Caribbean	3,950
2	Africa	2,790
3	Global	1,330
4	East Asia and Pacific	1,180
5	South Asia	786
6	Eastern Europe	750
7	Middle East and North Africa	621
	Total	11;407

Source: 2021 Challenge 2021

A recent study of some 200 gender-focused investment vehicles worldwide by the Wharton School found that while nearly 40% of funds in the sample target the United States and Canada, 31% prioritize Africa, and almost 20% invest in Latin America and the Caribbean (Biegel, Brown, and Hunt 2021), perhaps influenced by the possibilities of concessional financing and other de-risking strategies by DFIs and MDBs. Overall, the funds in the Wharton sample aim to raise about $13 billion, close to the current 2X target. However, Biegel, Brown, and Hunt (2021) report that progress is slow and to date the funds have only actually raised $6 billion, less than half of their goal. And the quantum of this mobilized capital that is deployed is smaller still. This growth pattern is too slow and too fragmented and must be accelerated.

A third trend is that dynamism and innovation continue to characterize gender lens investing in emerging markets. For example, African GLI champions have established an array of creative, customized vehicles to support the collective learning and capital placement by women angel investors in specific economies and cultures, such as the Dazzle Angels in South Africa, the Women’s Investment Club in Senegal and Ivory Coast, the Lady Angel Network in Ghana, and Rising Tide Africa in Nigeria (Nokwoma 2021). However, while mobilizing women angel investors for GLI is important, this work is also very labor-intensive and relatively small in scale, although its impact can be substantial.

At the same time, though, recent years have seen a fourth trend in the GLI space: the increasingly frequent appearance in the market of scaled vehicles and products. For instance, the women-led and women-focused Alithea IDF private equity fund, managed out of Lagos and investing in growth-oriented companies in six African countries, announced its final close at $100 million (European Development Bank 2021). The largest Africa-focused private equity fund employing a gender lens is the women-led London-based Development Partners Fund III, which has raised $1.15 billion (Proparco 2020; Mitchenall 2021). Continent-wide, examples include the collaboration between Standard Bank and the United Nations Economic Commission for Africa on the African Women Impact Fund, which has trained over 40 female fund managers in GLI and aims to raise $1 billion over the next ten years (Gatome 2021).

Scaled GLI initiatives were launched in 2021 in Southeast Asia, as well. With a substantial anchor investment from a Danish pension fund, SWEEF Capital—a women-owned and -led, Singapore-based private equity fund—successfully launched its initial $100-million fund targeting growth-stage SMEs in the region that adopt inclusive strategies to provide sustainable solutions to underserved markets (Fixsen 2021). And, by the end of 2021, IIX Global, another Singapore-based asset manager, had raised $78 million toward its $150 million Women’s Livelihood Bond series, whose proceeds provide capital to women-focused businesses in Southeast Asia and beyond. Listed on the Singapore Exchange, the bonds are supported by banks, asset managers, DFIs and aid agencies (Impact Alpha 2021; UNCCC 2021). In addition, the International Finance Corporation and UN Women jointly published a global practitioners’ guide for using sustainable bond issuances, including social bonds, to advance gender equality (Odaro et al. 2021).

In a fifth trend, an array of organizations is adopting gender equality policies and gender lens investing practices. Soukamneuth, Harri, and Newton-Howes (2021) call for deep expertise in organizational change management to shift adverse gender norms in institutions. In gender lens investing, they argue, ‘more women are needed in senior roles in investment firms’ to transform their own leadership and drive institutional change. Gender policies and action plans have been adopted by some national DFIs in the Caribbean and impact investment firms in Southeast Asia (Jackson and De Morais Sarmento 2021). A major non-profit, Pro Mujer, shifted from its longstanding microfinance mission in Latin America to become a full-fledged gender-lens investor, including through a new fund that makes debt investments of $1 million to $3 million in growing businesses promoting women’s empowerment (Rotondaro, Cavalcanti, and Correa 2021).

Sixth, there is increasing interest in investing at the intersection of gender and climate. Western DFIs are particularly interested in testing new ways of de-risking investments and managing and measuring impact in this space to attract private institutional finance (see, for example, Attridge 2021). Large-scale investments in green infrastructure using a gender lens at all stages of the investment process offers immediate scale and reach, especially in key sectors such as renewable energy, clean water, mass transportation systems, and sustainable agriculture (2X Gender and Climate Finance Task Force, 2021; Vizaki et al. 2021). Biegel and Lambin (2021) underscore the importance of investors in this space developing their strategy, setting measurable gender and climate-related targets, and applying a gender lens across the entire investment process. Apampa (2020) points to the Green Climate Fund as one multilateral institution that has incorporated gender considerations into its investment processes. Sammy (2021) emphasizes that in the small island developing states whose threats from climate change are existential, gender, climate and finance must be addressed together; the stakes are too high to do otherwise.

A seventh trend is that the downstream sustainable development impacts of gender lens investing are understudied. To date, and in some ways understandably, the field has been preoccupied with raising capital. Evaluative studies and discourse have largely concentrated on documenting front-end outcomes relating to capital mobilization, leverage, concessionality, and additionality for a range of investment instruments (see Habbel et al. 2021). However, investors also need and want to understand the effects their placement of capital has on the sustainable development of key downstream stakeholders, especially within the households of entrepreneurs, employees, suppliers, and customers of investee businesses. Indeed, retail investors, pensioners and taxpayers worldwide are increasingly holding the claims of asset owners and managers to much closer account. To reduce this barrier to GLI’s growth, scholars and practitioners should devote greater attention to testing and refining credible, efficient methods and technologies to assess such downstream impacts continuously, in real time. Moving forward, GLI must be able to demonstrate that capital deployed in this way is transformational in terms of women and girls’ lives, especially when investing with a gender lens involves mobilizing public finance through blended vehicles. In addition, if GLI approaches are to be further be deployed within the framework of development cooperation, then it is essential for rigorous impact assessment to demonstrate that this approach is effective in achieving the promise of inclusive and sustainable development.

Finally, knowledge-production and practice asymmetries persist. In their analysis of development economics over the past 30 years, Amarante et al. (2021) find that fewer than one in six articles on development policy were published by researchers from Southern universities. ‘Practices and paradigms that exclude Southern researchers from academic dialogues in the South inhibit the plurality and richness of such dialogues’, they write. ‘They promote an unhealthy and unsustainable dominance of Northern researchers in a field where Southern researchers have the advantage of first-hand knowledge’. Yet one of the encouraging findings of this study is that articles based on South–North collaborations increased from 2% in 1990–18% in 2020.

It is time for leaders in gender lens investing to take steps to address this barrier to the growth of the field. In GLI, nurturing reciprocal North–South collaborations as well as providing support to Southern-based scholars and practitioners must be priorities if the knowledge production process is to be leveled in the interests of more effective and appropriate policies and products, and growth, in emerging markets. This special issue can be seen as one marker along this path.

5. The contributions of this special issue

The imperative of GLI growth is urgent in the face of the combined damaging effects on women of the pandemic, climate change, and patriarchy. GLI strategies, tools and impacts must be scaled up as rapidly as possible and their benefits must reach much larger numbers of women entrepreneurs, employees, suppliers, and consumers. These strategies must be driven by and proactively engage practitioners and researchers based in the markets where this capital is to be deployed. And critical, independent, and open knowledge must accompany, inform, investigate, and enable GLI’s future continuous and impactful growth. Against this backdrop, this special issue of multidisciplinary, peer-reviewed papers contributes to pushing the frontiers of GLI growth forward in five areas:

Providing new insights on the scope and role of gender lens investing: In the special issue’s lead article, Tia Subramanian, Arianna Muirow and Joy Anderson make the case for a broader definition of gender in GLI that includes diverse gender identities and sexualities. In an era of emboldened attacks on the rights of LGBTIQ+ citizens in countries such as Ghana and Nigeria, this issue matters. Drawing on gender and queer studies in both the Global North and Global South, and informed by their practice at the Criterion Institute, the authors point to growing evidence that businesses perform more effectively when workplaces are inclusive and safe for all employees. To translate this broader concept into finance and investment, they call on stakeholders active in GLI to provide greater transparency on outcomes, invest in better, more granular data, use language that signals intent, and rely more extensively on local expertise.

Underscoring the importance of the care economy: The pandemic has shone an intense light on both women’s unpaid care work in the home as well as paid, but unfair, care work. There is now ample evidence documenting women’s ‘time poverty’ from their unpaid care workload as they engage in income generating activities, including employment and entrepreneurship. That, combined with the drudgery of unpaid care and domestic chores, has resulted in powerful barriers to women’s economic empowerment, preventing the household and the economy from tapping into women’s full potential. The care economy is also a major job provider for women, and likely to grow as populations age and change. The International Labour Organization (2021) estimates that 80% of all domestic workers worldwide are women—which has often provided the kind of support that other women need to find success in paid work. Generally, working conditions for domestic workers are extremely precarious, and even more so when migrant women are involved. But addressing these barriers to women’s empowerment has not yet become a priority in gender lens investing. If GLI is about a ‘gender inclusive approach in designing market-based instruments that play a significant role in promoting women’s empowerment’ (Maheshwari et al. 2019, 15), then the care economy should become more central to this field.

As Anne-Marie Lévesque and Jessica Espinoza-Trujano observe, development finance institutions—which have traditionally been blind to this issue—are presented with an important opportunity to redress this deficiency and increase their investments in innovative business models that can scale affordable services in the care economy. Feminist scholarship cited by these authors suggests that, in doing so, DFIs can contribute to the recognition, reduction, redistribution, reward and representation of care work in emerging economies. This contribution is important as DFIs embark on the discussion of their potential role to help shape a fairer care economy. Other impact investors are also starting to pay attention to the role they can play to help transform the care economy. The International Development Research Centre and the Soros Economic Development Fund have recently launched an action research program on GLI and other forms of impact investing in the care economy (Robino et al. 2021).

Systematizing learning on how to implement GLI effectively: Using a case study approach, Ruta Aidis, Sarah Eissler, Nicole Etchart, and Renata Truzzi de Souza describe the organizational-change process of NESsT, a small impact-investment firm, in introducing gender policies, procedures and metrics into its portfolio companies and its internal operations. Analyzing survey data from company owners and employees in 17 socially oriented portfolio companies in Latin America and Eastern Europe, the authors report, among other findings, that company founders expressed interest in tracking gender metrics but faced adoption obstacles, including the business challenges associated with COVID-19, ‘machismo’ in the workplace, and budget constraints. Modifying the GLI strategy to meet the specific needs of investee firms and using training and tools to gain buy-in among internal staff are key lessons from this case. This contribution is also significant in that it showcases an innovative, mutually respectful model of collaboration between researchers and practitioners in which new knowledge drove learning and change by both partners.

In another case study, Rebekah Avard, Moses Mukuru and M.J. Liesner reflect on learning from the application of the Qualitative Impact Protocol (QuIP) to assess the impacts of an investment by impact investor AgDevCo in a cotton-processing company in northern Uganda. Attempting to ‘blindfold’ both field researchers and participants on the identity of the intervention being evaluated, the QuIP method involves the collection of narrative causal data through interviews and group discussions with project stakeholders at the household and farm level. The authors report that the test proved successful and that AgDevCo will employ QuIP in the future in alongside its core quantitative metrics, particularly to examine the theories of change of its investments. However, they also point out that findings from QuIP applications cannot be generalized nor can the magnitude of observed changes be estimated with precision.

Understanding how to mobilize capital in ways that are both women- and Southern-led: For a variety of reasons, increasing the number and scale of investment funds in emerging markets that are both Southern- and women-led has proven to be one of GLI’s most difficult tasks. Drawing on theories of entrepreneurial belonging and informed by interviews with 23 women fund managers operating in six African countries, Jessica Espinoza Trujano and Lelemba Phiri report on a narrative analysis that identifies some of the obstacles involved. They explore the ways in which gender bias favoring men in the process of investing in entrepreneurs is further fortified and entrenched by gender bias favoring men, particularly white men, in the allocation of capital to fund managers. The authors conclude that if the strategic goal is to scale up gender lens investing in emerging markets, then it is not sufficient for GLI initiatives to primarily promote the empowerment of women as beneficiaries of investment. What is needed instead, their research suggests, are robust measures to substantially increase the power of women over investment decisions among locally based asset managers and asset owners.

Building demand-side knowledge on gender dynamics in investee firms: The strategies, challenges, and achievements of realizing gender equality outcomes through the recipients of investments made with a gender lens—that is, the investee firms of GLI funds and programs—are also important issues for engaged scholars to examine. Informed by agency theory and resource dependence theory, Valentina Marquez-Cardenas, Juan David Gonzalez-Ruiz, and Edwardo Duque-Grisales summarize the findings of their quantitative analysis of the relationship between board gender diversity and firm performance for 243 listed companies in five large Latin American economies between 2012 and 2018. With women representing only 7.6% of board directors in the sampled companies during the period, the region lagged other emerging markets as well as developed economies in board gender diversity (BGD). Testing a statistical model on their dataset, the authors find no relationships between BGD and firm performance. They conclude that this lack of a critical mass of women on boards limits companies’ access to realize performance gains through the additional knowledge, networks, and reputational benefits that more gender-diverse boards can potentially offer, as showcased in other research. This contribution, therefore, is a call for deeper engagement by researchers with BGD-related issues.

Integrating a commitment to social well-being and environmental sustainability into their business models, nearly 800 Benefit Corporations (B Corps) operate in all sectors across Latin America (Sistema 2021). In the final paper in this special issue, employing social exchange theory, Francoise Contreras, Karla Soria-Barreto and Sergio Zuniga-Jara examine the role of 242 female employees in voluntary innovative work arrangements within 16 B Corps based in seven countries in the region. Testing a statistical model against survey data, the authors find a positive relationship between managerial support and innovative work behavior (IWB) and a positive relationship between employee work engagement and IWB. Further, employees’ perception of corporate reputation is found to exert a significant moderating effect on the relationship between managerial support and IWB. The authors conclude that inclusive, innovative B Corps can be more competitive and attractive to investors whose capital can enable these firms to grow.

6. Future research directions

Each of the papers in this collection identifies possible future research directions that would further contribute to building a fuller, independent knowledge base that can, in turn, strengthen, accelerate, and critically interrogate strategies for growing gender lens investing in emerging markets. On the supply side, further investigation is merited on, for example, operationalizing a broader definition of gender that includes diverse gender identifies and sexualities; establishing and scaling locally based, women-led investment vehicles; increasing the numbers, and supporting the career advancement, of women investment professionals; and how to increase the decision-making power of women as investors. Examining these and other topics is especially relevant in potentially high-impact sectors such as the care economy, green infrastructure, and sustainable agriculture.

As it is for the broader impact investing industry, impact washing is a concern for GLI. Nuanced, verifiable and credible evidence is essential to independently determine the ways and extent to which individuals and households ultimately benefit—or do not benefit—from the projected business and income gains of gender lens investments. Here, with their deep understanding of and immersion in the context in which they operate, local researchers ‘can help assess and incorporate the perspective of stakeholders experiencing the impact (whether positive or negative, direct or indirect, intended or unintended)’ (On Think Tanks 2021, 9). Demonstrating tangible results and accountability is particularly important for a field like GLI where much of the catalytic or de-risking capital is provided by taxpayer-funded public entities.

Further research on the demand side is crucial, as well. In general, GLI growth in emerging markets will only be achieved with a better understanding of how different regions and sectors can ensure a robust pipeline of investment-ready enterprises whose business models are designed to achieve meaningful gender equality outcomes. Critical, comparative analysis of the effectiveness of a range of approaches to improve investment readiness—including, for instance, gender-focused business advisory services, training, incubators, and accelerators—should yield useful insights. One promising initiative on the demand side is the Gender Smart Enterprise Assistance Research Coalition (G-SEARCh; 2021) of six experienced impact funds that deploy grants to enable a sub-set of their portfolio companies to integrate gender considerations into their business models, collect data on firm performance, and share the learning of these investees.

Beyond technical assistance and training, how company owners can otherwise be incentivized and supported by investors to adopt and permanently integrate GLI policies and practices is also an important topic for future research. Further, measuring the influence of board gender diversity on business performance for smaller private businesses as well as larger, publicly traded companies across a range of sectors and countries constitutes another key area of study, as is examining the effects of innovative workplace arrangements on gender outcomes and firm success.

Moreover, there is a cluster of research questions relating to the effectiveness of public policy aimed at accelerating impact-driven businesses that help address gender inequalities. For example, what are the most appropriate frameworks for regulating gender lens investing and impact investing as a whole? What is the impact and cost-effectiveness of specific public policies—such as start-up financing, venture capital policies, fiscal incentives, certification, public procurement, environmental and sustainability policies, business incorporation models, and business incubation and acceleration—on the scaling and success of gender lens investors and their investee companies? To what extent and in what ways are such policies gender targeted or gender-mainstreamed? And how do different combinations of policies work in stable economies versus conditions of fragility? Again, local researchers and policy organizations can play important roles in examining these and other relevant questions (see LaFrance et al. 2021).

Beyond these and other substantive topics to be investigated, there are equally important questions about how this new knowledge to inform GLI growth in low- and middle-income economies can and should be produced. First, to optimize insights and root growth in local economies, any future research agenda should be primarily defined and driven by scholars, practitioners and policymakers working in institutions based in emerging markets themselves. Local researchers can provide context-specific sectoral expertise embedded within the macroeconomic and policy realities of their countries as well as in micro-level economic, political, and cultural processes.

While the contributions to this special issue are authored by diverse research teams, their organizational affiliations are nonetheless mostly Northern. There is, therefore, much more work to be done to fully democratize and authentically globalize the production of new knowledge in the GLI space. But the systems entrenching the dominance of Northern knowledge production are strong. Any Southern-led knowledge initiative to expand and deepen GLI will require sustained intentionality among all parties and as well as substantial multiyear funding to succeed.

Second, this research agenda should be based on respect for and commitment to methodological and disciplinary pluralism. In this collection of papers, feminist theory and queer studies, narrative analysis and ‘small n’ case studies co-exist alongside theories of economics and finance and the testing of statistical models on larger quantitative datasets. It is the combination of these methods that, taken together, offers greater explanatory power than any single research approach or tool. And it is exactly this kind of methodological diversity that should permeate the curricula, case studies and analytical work of training programs in Southern higher education and research institutions.

Finally, the research agenda for growing gender lens investing in emerging markets must be anchored in the principle and the practical expression of open data. As with other types of impact investing and sustainable finance, too much of the data gathered by GLI actors are still proprietary and confidential, and therefore not readily available for scholars and practitioners to examine and debate in the public domain. For GLI to grow more rapidly and exert deeper impact, data transparency must be a core feature of future research. There are promising, Southern-oriented models of innovation for collecting, sharing, storing, and making good-quality data accessible. Funding agencies should support efforts to build upon this foundational work and stimulate further ingenuity in this pivotal area.

7. Conclusion

In summary, then, future research on the growth of gender lens investing in emerging markets should be more Southern, more plural, and more open. It should also be, resolutely and consistently, actionable. The insights from this knowledge production process, critical or otherwise, must be provided to practitioners in real time to help the field adjust its scaling strategies and tactics as GLI proceeds forward. Respectful, reciprocal scholar-practitioner partnerships can facilitate efficient knowledge utilization. The impacts of gender lens investing must be relevant and proportionate to the needs of the millions of women in emerging economies coping with the pandemic, climate change and patriarchy. There is much to be done to build this knowledge base, it is important work, and it is urgent.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the International Development Research Centre.