Evaluating gender-smart investments: The impact of investing in gender-diverse ownership and leadership
British International Investment (BII) is the UK’s development finance institution and impact investor with a mission to help solve the biggest global development challenges. BII invests to create more productive, sustainable and inclusive economies in Africa, Asia and the Caribbean, enabling people in those regions to build better lives for themselves and their communities.
Between June 2023 and April 2024, Kore Global conducted a theory-based evaluation to better understand the potential development impacts for women of BII’s investments meeting the 2X Challenge ‘entrepreneurship’ and ‘leadership’ criteria (i.e., investments with gender-diverse ownership and/or leadership). BII’s portfolio included investments within ICT, healthcare, food, financials, infrastructure, and services industry groups. The overall purpose of the evaluation was to generate robust evidence on how their investments have contributed to development outcomes for women in order to inform refinements to BII’s approach to gender-smart investing.
Over a period of 10 months we:
Developed a theory of change for how BII’s investments in funds and companies with gender-diverse leadership and ownership are expected to contribute to development outcomes for women as employees, leaders and consumers.
Applied a mixed-method approach, including desk-based review and key informant interviews with 29 investees to explore their contributions to potential development impact for women employees, suppliers, and consumers through gender-smart business practices.
Explored key themes through four case studies:
The benefits of gender-diverse leadership: ‘how’, ‘why’ and ‘in what ways’ does having more women in senior leadership support improved outcomes for women
Best practices in gender smart recruitment, retention and career development opportunities
Gender-smart investing strategies: Insights from fund managers with gender-diverse ownership and/or leadership
How and under what circumstances can the 2X qualification influence the advancement of gender diversity initiatives
Produced a final evaluation report and summary report including actionable recommendations for BII, with relevance to other DFIs
Shared our findings with the BII staff and their investees, the 2X Global community, FCDO, and wider impact-investing groups in a series of 4 webinars.
