Gender Lens Investing

Chapter 1Womenomics and the Measures That Matter

“All economies have savings and productivity gains if women have access to the job market. It's not just a moral, philosophical or equal-opportunity matter. It's also an economic cause. It just makes economic sense.”¹

—Christine Lagarde, Managing Director, The International Monetary Fund

Say the word womenomics to a crowded room of investors and the typical reactions include snarky bemusement to utter bewilderment. Rolling of eyes and tilting of heads toward the ceiling—you bet. There are invariably some mumblings of “women-what?” since a majority of investors (men and women) have neither heard of the term nor ever contemplated women as an economic cohort with significant financial or commercial relevance.

They're not alone. Although the debate over gender equality has raged for decades in the United States, women and their potential contribution to economic growth remains a novel concept. Even the practitioners of the Dismal Science have yet to fully grasp the economic importance of women. Open up any standard economic textbook and you will see a chapter on fiscal and monetary policies, trade, foreign exchange, investment, and other traditional metrics of economic growth. Good luck, however, finding that chapter on gender—it's not there because sex-disaggregated data and gender-driven growth remain outside the economic mainstream, notwithstanding the accumulating evidence that the greater the participation of women in the formal ...