A Tool for Assessing and Improving Diversity, Equity and Inclusion in Enterprise and Investment Portfolios
The Sweef Gender ROI™ is a practical tool for use in and with enterprises and investments to assess and improve diversity, equity, and inclusion. Developed by practitioners for practitioners, it is actionable, useful, and adaptable to context.
It offers a usable diagnostic, measurement, and management tool for practitioners to carry out gender analysis and identify concrete areas for improvement across a single enterprise or a portfolio of investments. It also provides a basis for managing performance and benchmarking progress over the short, medium and long term.
Women represent 51% of the world’s population, yet still experience significant gaps in economic participation and opportunity, educational attainment, health, survival, and political empowerment.
How to use the tool?
The tool captures 24 qualitative and quantitative indicators set out in the excel worksheets. The quantitative indicators use pre-set formulas, while the qualitative indicators are measured using guide questions suitable for micro, small and medium, and large enterprises to assess existing policies and practices.
The assessment results in an overall score which sets the baseline assessment and informs gender action plans with the aim to improve scoring through periodic assessments. Gender action plans identify the gender gaps and the mitigating actions to be undertaken by enterprises. Periodic assessments will track progress on gender action plans.
Who Should Use the Gender ROI™
It is designed for a wide audience including entrepreneurs, investors, financial advisors, intermediaries, researchers, regulatory agencies, government policy makers, development agencies, foundations, and private sector companies. This manual provides background on the tool’s evidence base and utility. It also presents practical guidance on the rationale, scope and application of each indicator to assist users in interpreting, implementing and applying the tool consistently.
Enterprises and investors are encouraged to utilise the tool as a gap analysis, assessment and management tool to identify gaps and improve practice over time.
The tool can be used by different stakeholders in a variety of ways:
- Guide investors in developing their gender equality and diversity frameworks, investment strategies, investment evaluation and selection, portfolio construction, exits, and related monitoring systems to complement financial analysis at the due diligence stage.
- Support enterprises to integrate a gender lens into their values systems, policies and practices and improve diversity, equity and inclusion over time.
- Give fund managers a defined due diligence framework to identify opportunities for gender equality and diversity improvement, and support the integration of gender action plans into investee 100-day business plans and medium-term value creation strategies that benefit women, investors, and entrepreneurs.
- Enable fund managers to manage investment performance through ongoing assessments of investee and portfolio level gender equality measurement, guiding post-investment value creation and portfolio-level interventions.
- Inform gender specialists and policymakers on how to address gaps in programs related to mainstreaming diversity, equity, and inclusion.
Over time, data developed through application of the tool can also:
- Enable the development of standardised gender datasets that researchers can use to test hypotheses and support evidence-based research on the relationship between diversity, equity, and inclusion as well as business and investment performance
- Provide data to inform analysis and support the development of gender lens strategies within the business processes of different organisations.
Wider adoption of the Gender ROI™ will generate datasets captured in a global database, enabling more robust gender analysis. Over time, this will allow academic researchers to validate the linkages between gender equality and diversity, financial and social impact, and business and investment performance. These datasets will also support benchmarking across industries, countries, and regions.
Developing this knowledge facilitates the mainstreaming of gender lens investing as an investment strategy across a broad spectrum of investors through frameworks, tools, metrics and best practices. A shared best practices library will further support gender interventions and strengthen the broader gender lens investing ecosystem.