Reflections from UN Women Brazil in São Paulo

For decades, social organizations and governments around the world have been focused on empowering women by helping them to access places previously restricted to men.

For many onlookers, women's rights and the professional opportunities for women have advanced tremendously. More female-majority firms and businesses have entered the spotlight and successful entrepreneurs have even gone as far as launching their own funds to scale up investing in women.

But to the rest of us who have been in this fight for decades, there is still much imbalance and injustice at play. That was the focus oft the conversation at the event by UN Women in São Paulo, Brazil.

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UN Women Brazil: Promoting innovative financing through smart investment with a gender approach

Throughout the panel and in the Q&A that ensued after, the conversation seemed to focus mostly on the following questions.

  • Why do women still feel misunderstood by traditional banks and their financial instruments despite so much evidence?

  • Why do women still face so many barriers, such as discrimination and bias, when it comes to accessing resources?

  • What are the cultural barriers that hinder women when it comes to entrepreneurship and investment?

  • Why do investors using a gender criterion find it difficult to raise funds for their funds?

Those present, almost in unison, stated that we need to stop discussing gender as “charity,” "as a “problem,” as a “barrier,” and as “niche.” Instead, when we talk about Gender rights, we should be emphasizing the outcomes of success stories and all of the metrics related to investments in women and women-led businesses that have surged in the past few years. This centers the conversation around and how to expand them. For example, how financial education and access to affordable housing amongst women create intergenerational impact.

Changing the Narrative

We need to address the theme from the perspective of wealth rather than poverty; the solution and not the problem. We need to see women as clients and partners, not as beneficiaries. By positioning these cases as business rather than charity, we will advance even better and more agile results.

Women, in turn, whether they are entrepreneurs, investors, mentors, managers, engineers, or scientists, must come together and strengthen their networks for the good of their business. The world needs more women supporting women everywhere. We have failed a lot as a society to believe in some historical myths such as women can't be trusted, women are hard to deal with, there are no women in finance, there are no women for the board (justifying mostly male boards), we did not find women experts on this subject for our event.

Creating a Future Through Collaboration

In 2019, NESsT began work with its Global Portfolio of Invested Social and Environmental Businesses to initially map the state of gender among entrepreneurs, their teams and their beneficiaries so that we can then have an action plan for improvements aimed at greater equity. We aim to positively influence them on the gender agenda so that they also improve their other indicators: social impact, performance, profitability. In the future we will look at gender from our selection of investment business.

Organizations such as UN Women have been working hard to find and promote women-focused financial instruments, as well as reference tools for investors like NESsT to refine their approach to a more equitable world.