Publication database

This report provides a landscape for impact investment women’s health focused in Colombia and Peru in order to catalyze impact investment interest and capital to the most-needed areas of women’s health in Latin America. More specifically, it identifies gaps in service provision, areas of opportunity for investment, pipeline opportunities, and examples of women’s health programs that are focused on impact and sustainability.

Women play a key role in the economies of sub-Saharan Africa. In fact, sub-Saharan Africa is the only region where women make up the majority of those who are entrepreneurs. However, a range of impediments render women’s businesses less productive and having fewer employees than those owned by men. This new report seeks to focus attention on the challenges that Africa’s women entrepreneurs face and identify practical solutions. The report draws on new, high-quality, household and firm level data to present the clearest evidence to date about the barriers to growth and profitability faced by women entrepreneurs.The report offers policy makers evidencebased guidance on designing programs to target multiple obstacles and improve the performance of women entrepreneurs.  

This study was designed to improve the understanding of the challenges and opportunities involved in fnancing womenowned businesses in emerging markets. It looks at how capital fows to these businesses: who is involved, the roles they play, the tools they have, and how they interact with each other.

This report summarizes information gathered from 48 Impact Investors and entrepreneurial ecosystem stakeholders in Latin America - primarily members of the ANDE network- as well as 254 firms that comprise their portfolios. It includes information from surveys and key informant interviews with 24 Impact Investors and entrepreneurial ecosystem actors. This report highlights that while it is clear that gender equality is good for business and good for development, Impact Investors in Latin America are still only in the early stages of embedding this focus in their investment process and activities.

This research report uses country level data and expert interviews to understand the critical gender gaps and entrepreneurial solutions to advance the lives of women in Southeast Asia. The study outlines a framework that captures economic empowerment, personal safety and mobility, formal representation, education, health, time and decision-making as seven mutually reinforcing dimensions that are critical to women’s empowerment in Southeast Asia. The report shows that while many development indicators demonstrate that the lives of women in Asia have drastically improved, endemic problems continue to keep them from fulfilling their potential.

This report covers SPRING Acccelerator's learning so that other accelerators, programmes, donors and ecosystem-builders can build on their experience to better support businesses to innovate for impact. SPRING broke up their learning into four sub-themes: the human-centred design process, business models for girl impact, accelerator design and investment. 

This report presents the global landscape of gender lens investing and examines the strategies used by gender lens investors across the globe. In doing so, it also examines ways in which businesses promote social and economic empowerment of women and correlates investment strategies to them. The report studies patterns and draws insights about the evolution of the gender lens investing strategies, the financial instruments used in adopting them and regions where they are implemented. It also highlights the challenges gender lens investors face in emerging geographies both in terms of raising capital and accessing an investible pipeline for the adoption of this strategy. It is notable that almost 70% of the funds using this strategy were seeded by women investors and/or raised funds from women. The report concludes with a discussion on the various aspects that need to be considered for promoting gender lens investing – especially in developing countries.

Even though there is an increase in the size of the private equity, venture capital, and private debt gender lens investing field and the diversity of its offerings, there is still a lack of uniformity in investment processes and definitions.This gender lens investing report offers a global scan of gender lens private equity, venture capital, and private debt funds. 

This report aims to help unlock business opportunities that advance the health, rights, and well-being of women in global value chains. It highlights the benefits of investing in women along the value chain and provides a framework for action and practical guidance for companies to identify and strengthen value-chain investment opportunities that deliver positive returns to business, women, and society.