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Gender lens investing : why is transparency around gender data the key to gender equality at work? And listen to the podcast interview with Diana van Maasdijk
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Gender lens investing : why is transparency around gender data the key to gender equality at work? And listen to the podcast interview with Diana van Maasdijk

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

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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?


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