MORRISON We believe our strategy fits with our mandate to maximise returns without undue risk of loss. It is our strong view that diverse and inclusive boards and management teams generate superior value, and we remain committed to actively collaborating with companies to enhance the diversity of their boards.

For the year ended 30 June 2023, we voted against 433 companies globally that did not meet our threshold of having at least 30 per cent female directors – in North America, Europe and other developed countries – or at least two female directors in other parts of the world.

We also firmly believe diverse perspectives in an inclusive culture drive better decision-making and outcomes for our organisation. This approach is reinforced by policies and programmes that support equity across our global team. Beyond offering inclusive benefits like parental leave, we conduct studies on internal pay equity and leverage partnerships with recruiting firms focused on historically underrepresented groups.

We also measure and evaluate our performance to identify opportunities for increasing representation. We continue to take steps to drive meaningful improvement in key performance indicators in underrepresented groups including women, members of the LGBTQI+ community, persons with disabilities, and ethnic and racial minorities.

KREIVI Gender equality is one of the EU’s founding values and a key objective of the UN Sustainable Development Goals. Through its operations, European Investment Bank (EIB) seeks to ensure that gender inequalities are not reinforced or overlooked, and that women and men are equally able to access and use the assets, services, benefits and opportunities generated by its work.

To this end, EIB has adopted a strategy on gender equality and women’s economic empowerment, and a gender action plan. The bank aims to embed gender equality and women’s economic empowerment in its business model and its lending, blending and advising work within and beyond the EU.

The EIB Climate Bank Roadmap defines the provision of gender-responsive climate finance as a priority area. It commits to investing more strategically in projects that simultaneously support the green transition, environmental sustainability and gender equality.

The bank has therefore invested in projects enabling women to play an active role in tackling the effects of climate change, and has backed women-led climate funds and female entrepreneurs in the fields of climate and the environment.

EIB is also designing infrastructure with women in mind. Women make up the majority of the urban population, yet their perspectives and voices are underrepresented in urban leadership worldwide. Critical infrastructure and services in cities, including housing and land, transport, public spaces and utilities serve women and men differently. This infrastructure is often developed without considering gender and social inclusion.

EIB is helping to change how infrastructure is planned and delivered to make cities more inclusive and climate resilient, including for women and members of the LGBTQI+ community.

KOTAMRAJU ADB [Asian Development Bank] is committed to reducing pronounced unequal access to education in the region. Children who are unable to go to school, even in countries where enrolment levels are high, tend to be from the poorest and most disadvantaged groups in society.

There is a clear gender bias in education, meaning girls and women are often at a disadvantage in most developing member countries. Others marginalised from mainstream education include young people in rural areas, those from ethnic, religious or linguistic minorities, refugees, and those living with disabilities. ADB has supported many projects that promote inclusivity, such as education scholarships and stipends linked with conditional cash transfer programmes. These programmes have often had positive results, particularly when targeted at girls or poor households.

ADB is committed to supporting gender equality through gender-inclusive projects in at least 75 per cent of its sovereign and nonsovereign operations by 2030. The bank promotes gender equality and women’s empowerment by mainstreaming these goals across the full range of its operations.

ADB’s Indigenous peoples’ safeguards aim to ensure the design and implementation of projects that foster full respect for Indigenous peoples’ identity, dignity, human rights, livelihood systems and cultural uniqueness, as defined by Indigenous peoples themselves. The idea is to ensure they receive culturally appropriate social and economic benefits, are not harmed by the projects and can actively participate in projects that affect them.

MONTEIRO International Finance Corporation (IFC)’s response to persistent gender gaps has been to develop new market research, and incubate pioneering investment approaches and advisory products to meet private sector client demand in the area of DE&I. IFC aims to integrate a gender lens in its projects across regions and industries with investment, advisory and upstream clients, which have broader development objectives.

IFC is trying to encourage more blended finance with UOP [use-of-proceeds] instruments and sustainability-linked finance. Blended finance mechanisms have played a key role in gender-specific IFC investment facilities, enabling access to capital for pioneering projects with higher perceived risks and uncertain returns.

To date, all IFC gender-specific blended finance investment facilities have been dedicated to solutions that support women’s entrepreneurship through access to capital, markets and capacity. IFC has also deployed a number of sustainability-linked loans to close specific gender gaps, such as women’s participation in the workforce.

Given the pressing need for financial inclusion, we are also working with banks, companies and investors to advance the economic inclusion of people with disabilities and LGBTQI+ individuals as corporate leaders, employees, entrepreneurs, consumers and stakeholders.

DORE Gender is a cutting theme across all our projects – in the same way as the environment – as it is crucial to achieving our twin goals. Last year, 90 per cent of projects included specific action to identify and address measures to close the gender gap.

We have 170 nationalities in our highly diverse workforce, while achieving gender equality is a priority in our organisation as well. We have a diversity index with a gender parity goal at all levels and are implementing policies to achieve it. This includes gender-neutral parental leave for childbirth or adoption, for primary and secondary caregivers. We also have a transparent remuneration structure that makes it easier to prevent gender discrimination.

The World Bank has made progress, including achieving gender parity in senior management. There remain imbalances at some levels of management and staff, but more granular targets are beginning to show results. There is also a big push in our recruitment process to increase diversity. We have made so much progress but we still have a lot more work to do in this area.

FAN Women make up more than half the population of Latin America and the Caribbean, and still face significant challenges in achieving economic and social equality. Even though the education gender gap has closed or even reversed for women in the region, they still earn 23 per cent less than men, controlling for education and experience.

Inter-American Development Bank (IADB)’s work in promoting gender equality focuses on addressing these and other gaps through the promotion of regulation, policies, services and cultural norm changes with an intersectional lens that considers factors such as race, ethnicity, disability, sexual orientation and gender identity.

In 2022, IADB reached record levels of mainstreaming of gender equality and diversity in its new loan approvals: 86 per cent and 53 per cent of new loan approvals supported gender equality and diversity, respectively. The four diverse population groups prioritised by IADB include Indigenous peoples, Afro-descendants, people with disabilities and LGBTQI+.

On the corporate side, IADB is seeking to increase female leadership. In 2022, nearly 50 per cent of its country representatives were women, and women filled 43 per cent of mid- and senior-level staff positions.

To achieve these levels, IADB has conducted annual gender pay gap analyses, carried out unconscious bias training for recruitment panels, promoted a 50-50 gender balance of candidates and interviewers on hiring panels, and allowed for flexible and hybrid working arrangements.

BRUSAS As part of our assessment in lending, we ask customers questions on gender distribution in the company, including management, as well as whether there is a gender pay gap and how big it is. We also ask for statistics on injuries in relevant businesses and, if relevant, we also consider the impact on the Indigenous population; in our case, Lappish.

KETTING In general, the Netherlands has always been on the forefront of LGBTQI+ rights. It was the first country in the world to legalise same-sex marriage, in 2001. In February 2023, sexual orientation and disability were formally added to article 1 of the Dutch constitution as prohibited grounds for discrimination. This makes it not only a good thing to do but the right thing to do and provides a common standard within the Netherlands and the Dutch public sector.

With BNG Bank being fully owned by Dutch government and exclusively focusing on the Dutch public sector, DE&I is automatically part of our mandate without being a standalone goal.