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(re)Value Gender
Program Overview
July, 2014
Finance and investing are key sites of power in the world where questions of value are debated,
defined and determined. What is the relative value of a country’s growth? The present value of a
company? The future value of a commodity? It is the practices of finance that assign this value, and
those practices are social constructions. The rules and practices by which we calculate financial value
are defined and redefined in the context of social and cultural norms.
Gender is also a social construction that assigns value. Counting sex is about whole numbers (how
many women, how many men), but gender is a dynamic concept that defines norms, behaviors,
identities and how those are (or are not) valued in a culture. Gender analysis, like financial analysis,
seeks to assess how value is constructed and assigned.
If we understood gender how would we assign value in finance differently?
To create an economy that works for all we need to shift what matters in our financial decisionmaking, including a more robust gender lens in investing.
(re)Value Gender is a program and research methodology and a program for connecting gender
analysis to the core practices through which we understand value in finance. For example, we have
applied (re)Value to the due diligence processes of early stage ventures, we call it a “due diligence
upgrade.” What are the new questions to ask or new answers we listen for that make us smarter
investors?
The process of revaluing gender cannot be relegated to analysts in investment houses, or finance think
tanks. We need to change who is at the table to reinvent the economy. We will not change the systems
of finance and investments and change what is valued in economic decision until we believe we can
change them. To do that will engage a broader set of actors, including actors with gender expertise,
shaping what is valued in finance and engaging finance as a tool of systems change.
How do we move from counting to valuing?
Many of the current approaches to bringing a gender lens to investing are still grounded in counting
women. For example, the number of women entrepreneurs, or the number of women on boards.
These are important but they limit the range of analysis. We need to rethink how we assign value.
Within (re)Value Gender we look for three things:
Examples of bias, where value was miss-assigned. Investors systematically undervalue women-led
businesses or define women’s consumers as a niche market. How can we erase that bias?
Examples of missed opportunities, what finance calls “alpha.” Women’s economic participation in the
economy is going to grow equal to China and India combined over the next 10 years. How do we
capture these opportunities?
Examples of missed risk, what finance calls “beta.” Women make up less than 1% of the employees in
big data firms. Inarguably, those firms are going to miss key factors that would affect design of these
structures. How should that affect private or public equity valuations of those firms?
As a result of this analysis we shift how value is assigned, and we reimagine the structures that we use
to capture that value in financial instruments. For example, the Geena Davis Institute in the U.S. has
been highlighting how women’s films are not valued in Hollywood. While, overall, they are equally
profitable, women’s films do not have the characteristics of a blockbuster (high cost, fast return).
Women’s films tend to have steady growth with lower upfront costs but a longer, steady tail. What
forms of financing would best capture the financial upside of this type of film and therefore
appropriately value women’s films?
We developed (re)Value Gender within Women Effect Investments, the initiative that housed
Criterion’s leadership role building in the field of gender lens investing since 2010. In that work, we
prioritized three challenges which we will address through the (re)Value program:
1. We will expand (significantly) the number of people who are able to integrate gender and
finance. The field is still new and we do not have a deep enough bench of expertise.
2. We will build a broader bank of proof points, research and demonstrations that expand the
imagination and the range of thinking around how gender matters in finance.
3. Finally, we will build a bridge between women’s organizations and the work of finance and
investments. The women’s movement has, traditionally, seen finance as a weapon not a tool
which made it difficult to engage the knowledge and expertise needed to bring a gender lens
to investing.
As we developed (re)Value Gender over the past two years, we sought to build a methodology that
would bridge gender expertise and finance expertise and create a space for leaders to practice, build
insight and evidence and, finally, enable finance to be used as a tool for systems change around core
gendered issues.
This program has been built with the direct partnership of Katherine Collins of Honeybee Capital and
through testing the accessibility of the thinking in workshops at a dozen conference and hosted
gatherings and over a hundred one on one conversations. Our two primary pilot projects have shaped
both the methodology and the processes that undergird the program. The pilots are briefly
summarized below.
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We began conversations with high quality bond analysts working in municipal bonds in transportation
at Breckenridge Capital Advisers. We paired the analysts with leaders at the Dallas Women’s
Foundation in a series of three dialogues over several months. The rich set of exploratory dialogues
surfaced a potential correlation between women’s political leadership and the core financial
performance measures used to evaluate municipalities in bond ratings. We then engaged Kelly
Northridge, a PhD candidate at Oxford and her work has surfaced avenues for further exploration.
The second pilot looked as assumptions around women-led businesses. Women tend to build normal
growth businesses, and we describe this most often as “a failure to participate in high growth
ventures.” What if instead, we appropriately valued “normal growth” companies, which are often both
profitable and return capital at a steady rate? In an effort to build strategies to shift this thinking, we
focused on tools categorized as “alternative term sheets” (combining debt and equity) that work well
for normal growth companies. Early on, people implored us to not “feminize” alternative terms sheets
because the association would devalue the tool. That spurred us with a team of volunteers to continue
to collect case studies and model term sheets that can demonstrate this as an appropriate and
profitable form of structuring an investment.
What is the systems change work needed for gender to matter in finance?
Criterion has recently articulated our theory of change in our 2015-2020 Strategic Plan which provides
a road map for our (re)Value Gender program. This thinking is informed by our work building the field
of gender lens investing, and our thirteen years of history working on how to change market systems.
 Cultural reframes create shifts thinking through language that resonates. People in finance
think in terms of value calculation, so talking about gender as a system that also assigns value,
makes sense.
 An Invitation to a simple action gives a permission to engage in an expert field like finance.
 By building a base of leaders equipped for this work we build confidence in a field of new
experts who can value gender in finance.
 Increasing the number of women’s organizations actively incorporating finance as a strategy of
social change into the design of their programs provides institutional structures to sustain
leadership.
 Institutions demonstrate new possibilities as they deploy capital that reflects the results of
research that integrates gender analysis and financial analysis.
 Amplification of the work expands the reach of the methodology and its results to shape our
cultural imaginations about gender and finance.
Where do we practice integrating gender analysis with financial analysis?
Criterion will implement this methodology within three programs:
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We are building a self-study program that can engage small groups in the (re)Value methodology and
connections between gender and finance.
We are building day-long design lab sessions that provide a tool kit and a space for imagination around
integrating gender and finance. To build the base of leaders to sustain this work we will provide places
to design and experiment and continue to practice valuing gender in finance.
Through our research and design projects we elevate insights, proof points that gender matters in
finance. While each of these projects is a partnership with specific institutions (such as an aid agency, a
credit union, or a network of angel investors) who have the ability to implement the results, the
outcomes of the research are public. To build the field of gender lens investing requires a volume of
insights, rather than relying on a precious few. Even if the hypothesis of the thought experiment is
wrong or not implementable, the value is in reframing our thinking, expanding our imagination,
acknowledging that which has been absent from the analysis.
Many of our research projects begin with a finance challenge. For example, how do loan officers better
assign risk and opportunity in small businesses led by women. But we will also demonstrate how
finance (like policy or media or organizing) is a tool for social change. These research projects will begin
with an issue, such as the wage gap or sex trafficking, and seek to find the leverage within the system
of finance to affect the issue and design the change strategies to engage.
What enables us to see gender and therefore to value gender in finance?
Within Criterion’s network, built over the last decade of working both in sustainable finance and in the
women’s movement, we connect both with individuals and institutions that have the data, knowledge
and analytical tools to understand gendered systems in the world and with experts who are working
within and rethinking the systems of finance. We tap this network and set the table so that we can
explore together, forage for unexamined value or unexpected synergies.
Whether we are building educational tools or conducting research projects, we are focused on the
intersection of gender and finance in a particular context. For example, we might explore women’s
ownership patterns as a risk in debt instruments supporting agriculture in East Africa. Specificity is
important as we are looking at the intersection of
Gender (issue,
three values systems.
bias, dynamic,
norms)
In the specific context we look for where value
misunderstood, value that is
 not seen,
 seen but overvalued,
 seen but undervalued, or
 is in flux as a result of shifting gender
Context (sector,
norms
Finance (across all
geography,
asset classes)
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population)
From there we build work to specifically connect the gender analytics to the systems of finance. We
explore the purpose or function of the investment; the product design, incentives and regulatory
environment; and the specific process of analysis and decision-making that go into making the
investment.
The methodology looks for correlations more than causation. Overall, in finance, one does not have
the burden of proof to say that women’s leadership caused the increased financial stability, but rather
that the presence of women’s leadership correlates to financial performance.
This, in the end, is more than a methodology for analysis; it is cultural work enabling a cultural shift.
Gender lens investing promotes the idea that gender matters in finance. Women are an opportunity
not a limitation or a screen. (re)Value enables more rigorous analysis and understanding of our how
the often unconscious ways in which we devalue women, actually leads to less effective financial
design.
When we first began the (re)Value work, we imagined the outcome in the vein of an art exhibit. We
didn’t want the work to be a set of reports that can be filed, but a cultural experience that changes
how we value women and girls. We want to shift how we understand the power of gender in the world
and unleash all that becomes possible if we change what matters in financial decisions.
We want individuals and institutions to use (re)Value to further their own work, now. We welcome
that participation; in fact, it is the only way that this will work, by engaging a diverse array of settings
and building a broader table.
We invite you to join us in working to create an economy that works for all.
Criterion Institute www.CriterionInstitute.org
For more information contact: Joy Anderson [email protected]
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