Fearless Girl at the New York Stock Exchange. (Photo: State Street Global Advisors)
"Asset managers are paying increasing attention to board diversity and gender equity in the workplace as key investment metrics," according to a new Morningstar report.
That's not surprising given the growing evidence that having a female CEO and female board members, preferably together in the same company, as well as a diversified workplace improves corporate performance.
With that in mind, several fund companies have gone beyond incorporating those metrics via ESG analyses when selecting assets by creating funds with a gender focus. They include the SPDR State Street Global Advisors (SSGA) Gender Diversity Index ETF, which trades under the SHE symbol, the Glenmede Women in Leadership U.S. Equity Portfolio (GWILX) and Pax Ellevate Global Women's Leadership Fund (PXWIX).
Morningstar studied the proxy voting history of all three, plus several Calvert Research and Management funds, and found that their support for gender-focused shareholder resolutions was anything but uniform.
While the Pax Ellevate, Glenmede and Calvert funds voted 100% in favor of the gender-focused shareholder proxies that came before them, State Street supported just 20% of such resolutions.
The firm that sponsored the Fearless Girl statue installed in New York's financial district failed to support eight of the 10 gender and diversity shareholder resolutions it voted on over the past three years, including five pay-equity resolutions. It opposed six of the 10 gender and diversity resolutions and abstained from two.
