Research Background

Promoting gender equality and advancing the status of women and girls is a human right and vital to achieving all development objectives of the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). USAID’s Regional Development Mission for Asia (RDMA) and Asia Bureau emphasizes advancing inclusive economic growth by strengthening women’s economic empowerment and encouraging traditional and nontraditional partners to invest more financing and resources in these efforts. Aligned with these goals, USAID, in partnership with Criterion Institute, launched an assessment in August 2014 under the Asia and Middle East Economic Growth (AMEG) Best Practices Program to accelerate the field of gender lens investing in Asia.

Led by Patty Alleman, senior gender advisor for USAID/RDMA, and Joy Anderson, president of the Criterion Institute, this assessment builds on Criterion’s work during the last five years to build the field of gender lens investing. In this assessment, gender lens investing is defined as intentionally integrating a gender analysis into financial analysis to make better investment decisions. As Jackie VanderBrug, senior vice president at U.S. Trust, said, “This is a lens and not a limitation. A gender lens helps you see opportunity and mitigate risk.”

Although the field is global, literature and visible leadership in the field has been concentrated in North America and Europe. The purpose of this assessment was to highlight leadership and activities in Asia and make recommendations to accelerate the field of gender lens investing.

This assessment had a three-pronged approach:

1. Identifying opportunities that were moving forward or had the opportunity to move forward with assistance. Early in the assessment, the team prioritized a set of opportunity profiles that would demonstrate the breadth and potential impact of the gender lens investing field in Asia. Ms. Anderson and Ms. Alleman led a series of visits organized around these profiles, holding formal discussions with 166 individuals in Washington, D.C., New York, Vietnam, India, Bangladesh, Singapore, Hong Kong, Indonesia, the Philippines, and Thailand.
2. Identifying and engaging leaders in the field of gender lens investing in Asia. The team engaged more than 200 leaders in Asia through formal interviews and informal conversations. The team networked and tracked these relationships in such a way that they can become resources moving forward for investors, financial institutions, USAID and other donors, women’s rights groups, and other actors in the field.
3. Convening gender lens investing leaders in Asia. Forty-six leaders in Asia came together in Bangkok, Thailand, to connect, discuss their roles and activities, and develop to move the field forward.

In this assessment, USAID played a field-building role for gender lens investing in the region and engaged hundreds of collaborators and partners who are in a position to advance the field.