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WDI Leads Research in Gender Equity Impact Investment Effort
The project focuses on 29 SMEs across multiple LMICs in Africa, Asia and Latin America. These businesses work in a variety of sectors, including microfinance and financial inclusion, food and agriculture, and renewable energy and climate. WDI will investigate the outcomes of gender-smart TA provided to SMEs supported by their investors.
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- Investing
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Press Release: IIX Accelerates Gender Bond Issuances With Pricing of Women’s Livelihood Bond 3
Impact Investment Exchange (IIX) has successfully priced the US$27.7 million Women’s Livelihood BondTM 3 (WLB3), the third bond in the award-winning Women’s Livelihood BondTM Series (WLB Series). Advancing a total of 13 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), the WLB3 complies with the International Capital Markets Association (ICMA) Social Bond Principles and will support 180,000 underserved women and women entrepreneurs in the Asia Pacific region to respond, to recover from, and to build resilience in the aftermath of the COVID-19 pandemic. The WLB3 is also the maiden investment of IIX’s Women’s Catalyst Fund, a next generation gender lens vehicle designed to accelerate innovative financial instruments for women.
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- Entrepreneurship, Investing
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Making Bank Accounts Work for Women: Lessons on Designing Gender-Centric Financial Services
Papua New Guinea has the highest gender gap in financial inclusion in the Pacific region, with women 29% less likely to have access to formal financial services. Akhand Tiwari and Moinuddin Mohammed at MicroSave (MSC) explore how MiBank, a local micro-bank, has boosted women's inclusion through gender-centric product design and outreach strategies – and what other providers can learn from their success.
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- Entrepreneurship, Finance
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ResponsAbility To Empower Women in Emerging Markets via Climate Fund
A Swiss sustainable asset manager, responsAbility Investments, has announced its commitment to apply a gender lens to its investments through one of its climate funds.
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- Entrepreneurship, Environment
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A Phone Can Only Do So Much: Why Mobile Access Isn’t Leading To Digital Financial Service Usage Among Women in India
India has made significant progress in financial inclusion in recent years. However low-income working women are not benefiting from this momentum, even when they receive their wages digitally. To better understand why, BSR’s HERproject and MSC have researched the financial behaviors of female garment workers in India. Akhand Tiwari at MSC and James Steady at BSR explore the results, and discuss how the financial inclusion sector should respond.
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- Entrepreneurship, Finance, Investing
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MIT D-Lab and Upaya Social Ventures Announce Collaboration To Support Women-Led Startups in India
The 2021 Scale-Ups Accelerator, developed in collaboration between MIT D-Lab and Upaya, will prepare women entrepreneurs for investment and pilot new methods to address gender financing gap.
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- Entrepreneurship, Investing
- Region
- Asia Pacific
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Local Solar Enterprises Are Changing Women’s Lives in Kenya: Why Won’t Investors Support Them?
In Kenya, women are battling climate change by using solar products made by innovative local companies. Yet as Sanjoy Sanyal and Chen Chen at the World Resources Institute and Deborah Mburu at IDEAS TANK point out, these companies remain under-supported by the international investing community. They highlight a few of these women and businesses – and urge investors to get off the sidelines.
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- Energy, Entrepreneurship, Investing
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Analysis: Funds Are Recognising Their Biases Against Women
Despite its massive growth, the gender lens investing market has not yet tapped its potential.
- Categories
- Entrepreneurship, Investing, Technology
- Region
- Asia Pacific