The "Fearless Girl" statue. (Photo: Federica Valabrega)
Individual and institutional investors that apply a gender lens to mutual fund and ETF investments can now enhance that process by using a new screening tool rolled out Tuesday by As You Sow, a nonprofit that promotes environmental and social corporate responsibility through shareholder advocacy, coalition building and innovative legal strategies.
Gender Equality Funds screens the holdings of some 5,000 of the most commonly held U.S. mutual funds against a database that details individual company performance on 12 key gender equality performance indicators.
Those indicators measure policies that demonstrate companies' commitment to gender diversity and gender balance in their overall leadership, management and workforce, yielding an overall gender equality portfolio score for each mutual fund.
Investors can search the Gender Equality Funds database to find out how specific funds are scored, look for responsible options that track leading companies in terms of gender equality and compare financial returns.
