Welcome to our #153 weekly newsletter.
“For women taking control of their financial future”
-Jana Hlistova
From The Purse
In this week’s newsletter, we spotlight our interview with Diana van Maasdijk, the Co-Founder & CEO of Equileap, an ESG data provider specialised in gender data.
We talk about gender data, gender equality in the workplace and how to invest with a gender lens.
Listen to the full interview here.
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And you can review the news in brief so you stay on top of global financial, economic and investing trends.
I hope you enjoy this week’s newsletter.
Until next week,
Jana
Gender lens investing : why is transparency around gender data the key to gender equality at work?
Diana van Maasdijk joins us on The Purse Podcast to talk about gender data, gender equality at work and investing with a gender lens.
Diana van Maasdijk joined us on The Purse Podcast.
Diana is the Co-Founder & CEO of Equileap, an ESG data provider specialised in gender data.
Headquartered in Amsterdam, Equileap is the leading provider of data and insights on gender equality in the corporate sector. Equileap researches and ranks 4000 public companies around the world using a unique and comprehensive Gender Equality Scorecard™ with 19 criteria, including the gender balance of the workforce, senior management and board, as well as the gender pay gap, parental leave, and sexual harassment.
Prior to launching Equileap, Diana worked as Head of Philanthropy at ABN AMRO Private Bank and Director of Development at Mama Cash, the world's oldest international women's fund.
In this podcast interview we talk about gender data, gender equality at work and investing with a gender lens.
Here is a short extract from the interview:
Jana: Now you mentioned data with respect to gender equality. Why is data so important when it comes to gender equality at work?
Diana:
Well, data is power. We can't change what we can't measure.
That's what I always say to my team, and this is why it's really important to gather this data and to find out how are corporations doing on gender equality.
From their boardrooms to the supply chain, gather that data and so (we are) able to say, okay, this company is doing better ie ‘this company has improved’, this company's not doing that great’.
And you can only do that with data. And so I think that accessing that information is crucial.
Jana: what are some of the challenges that we see in companies at the moment around collecting data that gives us the insight specifically around gender? Is it difficult to collect?
Diana: yes it is because… well, things are starting to change now.
Equileap has been collecting data from 4,000 companies around the world since 2017. So as we collect the data, we inform the companies that we are collecting the data.
One of the biggest challenges is companies are not transparent.
So companies do not tell you, for example, the percentage of women in their workforce, they don't tell you what their gender pay gap is, or they won’t tell you what their parental leave policies are for men and women.
So we go and collect that data by researching everything a company publishes; their annual reports, their websites, their corporate social responsibility reports, their press releases.
Once we have collected that, if we don't find something, we say ‘no data’.
We then send that back to the company and say, ‘would you care to validate this? This is what we have been able to collect’. Where we don't find data, they don't get any points for that.
If there’s no data, the total average score that we give a company on gender equality goes down.
And so this is a process that we have in order to encourage companies to start publishing. And we see that every year more and more companies publish. Every year the scores are going up, not as quickly as I would've hoped, but we do see improvements.
And the biggest challenge, I think, continues to be the lack of transparency of many of these companies.
But it's starting to change. And I would say that is thanks to the investors because there's more and more investors interested in investing with a gender lens.
Jana: why do you think companies have an issue around being transparent with this data?
Diana: I think because their numbers are so bad. So you really have to force them or tell them that it's good for them.
It's clear to us that the companies who are doing better on gender quality are more transparent, and then there's many which are just not publishing anything, and we very much think that that's because their numbers are very poor…
Listen here for the full interview
News in Brief
Financial news
FTSE 100 hits record high: blue-chip stock index rises above previous record of 7,903 set in May 2018, amid hopes that global inflation is easing and central banks may be reaching the end of a sustained period of interest rate rises.
Bond-equity correlation turns the most positive since the late 90s as disinflationary tailwinds look to be finally bringing an end to the worst bear market in at least 4 decades for bonds while also providing a significant boost to equities.
US Federal Reserve slows rate increases but signals more to come. Raises benchmark rate by 25 bps to 4.5%-4.75% target range. BUT repeats ‘ongoing increases' will be appropriate. FOMC statement is a bit more hawkish than anticipated as "ongoing increases" (plural) is kept.
Wall St posts weekly gain despite blowout US jobs data and disappointing Big Tech earnings from Amazon, Apple & Alphabet. Nasdaq 100 scored a weekly advance of 3.3% while S&P 500 gained 1.6% in the past 5 days.
The European Central Bank (ECB) hikes by 50bps, will raise by same size in March. Raises main refinancing rate to 3.00% as expected, Depo Rate to 2.5%.
Bank of England (BoE) pushes the base interest rate up by 50bps to 4%. Huw Pill said the full impact of its rate increases had not yet been felt in the UK economy.
Cathie Wood says ARKK is ‘the new Nasdaq.’ Looking at the recent crash, she is right, may she also be right about the rebound.
To put things into perspective: ARK Innovation ETF has gained 34.4% YTD w/Coinbase up 111% and only one of the 29 stocks in the red in 2023.
Crypto: bitcoin, ethereum, DeFi & NFTs
Bitcoin kicked off the weekend above $23,400. It’s traded above $23,000 most of the week, up by 1.5%.
Ether (ETH) is trading at $1,680, up 0.8% over the last 24 hours. And ether surged 5% over the past week, according to data from CoinGecko.
Altcoins Optimism (OP), Fantom (FTM), ImmutableX (IMX) and Dydx (DYDX) were among the biggest gainers this week surging 33%, 34%, 40% and 31% respectively. Aptos (APT), which was one of the biggest gainers last week, dropped 6% over the last seven days. Toncoin (TON) also fell 8%.
Bitcoin NFT Mints Are Rising—But So Are Transaction Fees. Bitcoin users are putting assets on-chain, similar to NFTs on Ethereum, but there’s a cost to the increased activity.
Crypto-related companies stayed in the red as the market closed on Friday with Coinbase (CI) down 8.38% and Block Inc (SQ) having dropped 4.19%.
Bitcoin Is the Ultimate Insurance Policy: Cathie Wood. With only your seed phrase, she says “you’ll be able to cross a border and reclaim your wealth.”
MicroStrategy Stock Doubles Since January as Michael Saylor Stays Bullish on Bitcoin.
UK Minister Andrew Griffith wants to pass finance regulation bill by Easter. The bill has recently been amended to include provisions for crypto assets and stablecoins.
The Purse Podcast
We cover the following in our conversation:
Gender equality at work
The challenges we see in companies around gender data
Equileap's Gender Equality Scorecard
Why gender lens investing is still considered a niche market
The role investors play
Euronext's partnership with Equileap
Where will gender equality in the workplace be in 2030?
How can more women invest?
Coffee Break? Read This
The more senior your job title, the more you need to keep a journal
Women suffer guilt, abuse and disapproval. No wonder Jacinda Ardern is knackered
We’d love to hear from you. Get in touch with Jana via the The Purse website or tweet @jointhepurse and janicka.
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