Stella Tai piece on Gender Lens Investing featured in ValueWalk

Praxis update |

Gender Lens Investing targets opportunities for investing in women and girls

Gender Lens Investing (GLI), or Gender Impact Investing (GII), is an investing approach designed to impact social, economic, and gender inequality issues. Identifying opportunities and barriers to gender equity is a central focus for GLI investors. For Stella Tai, Praxis Stewardship Investing Impact and Analysis Manager, her passion for GLI grew from her experience with women-focused savings and loan associations in Kenya. In her article, recently featured in ValueWalk, Tai points to recent social movements such as “Me Too” and growing awareness around the gender pay gap as kindling that encouraged the use of a GLI framework.

Stella Tai, Stewardship Investing Impact and Analysis Manager | Praxis Mutual Funds

Stella Tai

Women sit at the intersection of a variety of social issues, so, “Gender lens investing is inclusive and not exclusive,” says Tai. According to Tai, the GLI framework magnifies an investor’s ability to see opportunities that affect positive societal change. Beyond gender equity, GLI aims to make an impact in a variety of areas where women are inevitably impacted, including climate change, poverty, and economic development.

Stella outlines the increase of women’s access to capital, promotion of workplace equity, and the improvement of products and services for women and girls as central themes of GLI. She believes that because women represent between 65%-85% of purchasing power, thoughtfully developed products that improve the lives of women and girls can have an enormous global impact.

Companies can engage with GLI issues through proxy voting, shareholder advocacy, and community development investing. Praxis Mutual Funds is guided by stewardship investing principles that allow us to invest in a way that impacts ESG issues, including gender equity. Learn more about our investment philosophy here.


How we invest

We believe you can make a positive difference when your investment decisions are motivated by your faith and values. We call this stewardship investing, our unique approach to socially responsible investing, that seeks to hold companies accountable and invest in a better world.

 

Disclosure

The MSCI ACWI (All Country World) ex U.S. Index is a free float-adjusted market capitalization weighted index that is designed to measure the equity market performance of developed and emerging markets, excluding the United States. The index consists of 44 country indices comprising 23 developed and 21 emerging market country indices. Indexes are unmanaged, do not incur fees and cannot be invested in directly.