About Gender ROI™

Across the world, women are moving into roles of potential influence and impact in areas they see as vital to individual and collective wellbeing, sectors such as education, healthcare and sustainability.

These promising developments are heralding positive effects in how organisations are led and operated and how businesses and entrepreneurial ventures are funded and supported. To accelerate this trend, we need a more granular understanding of how to identify and address gender barriers and enablers and relative performance against other organisations, industries and sectors.

The Sweef Capital Gender ROI™ has been developed for this express purpose. The tool provides a common language around gender, and clear systems and processes with which to translate aspirations into superior financial performance and positive social, economic and environmental impact.

Gender ROI™ Pillar Assessment Results

Three Outcome Pillars

Our focus is on creating measurable improvements in resilience, opportunity and inclusion for people and communities, particularly women.

Resilience

Access resources and participate in decision making processes that affect their lives and family

Opportunity

Opportunity

Equal opportunities to allow women become economically active and advance to leadership and decision making position

Inclusion

Inclusion

Address existing barriers to ensure their continued employment and advancement

Four Enterprise Dimensions

By applying different levers of change across the 4 Enterprise Dimensions of leadership, workforce, value chains, and society targeting women’s economic and social roles, contributions, and constraints and vulnerabilities, women’s economic empowerment is demonstrated through resilience, opportunities and inclusion.

Gender-diverse Leadership & Governance

Leadership

Women leaders promote gender equality and diversity within their own spheres of influence

Workforce

Workforce

Leadership champion women through its value systems, policies and practices, and is one of the key foundations of business resiliency

Value Chains

Value Chains

Leadership enable women’s economic empowerment through its customers and suppliers

Society

Society

Active contributions from other dimensions lead to improvement to women’s wellbeing, their families and communities

Gender ROI™ Practitioner’s Manual

The Sweef Capital Gender ROI™ Practitioner’s Manual sets out how any company, private equity/venture capital firm or their investors can conduct deep gender analysis and track performance.  The measures outlined in the manual have been designed by practitioners for practitioners and are flexible enough to integrate into existing reporting and governance regimes.

Who And Why Use

The Gender ROI™ informs both practice and performance as a diagnostic assessment for addressing inequalities while highlighting significant opportunities to improve and monitor outcomes for women and girls.

  • Enterprises: Integrates a gender lens into value systems, policies and practices, by improving DEI over time.
  • Investors: Advises on gender equality and diversity frameworks, investment strategies and related Due Diligence (DD) monitoring.
  • Fund managers: Provides a defined DD framework to identify gender equality and diversity improvement areas.
  • Gender specialists/policymakers: Advises on program gaps relating to DEI.

How To Use

The Gender ROI™ tool addresses the needs of a diverse audience, such as investors, financial institutions, companies of all sizes, and entrepreneurs, who are dedicated to promoting gender-smart corporate practices and investments.

To conduct the Gender ROI™ assessment, a series of interviews are conducted with relevant stakeholders within an enterprise, including key leaders in human resources, procurement, marketing, and gender champions. The primary objective is to identify gaps in policies and practices that hinder gender equality within the organisation. The baseline assessment is crucial as it identifies areas requiring improvement, establishes a reference point to measure the impact of interventions, and guides the development of targeted strategies for advancing gender equality.

The assessment typically consists of three sessions, each lasting approximately two hours. To effectively monitor the progress of gender interventions, it is recommended to conduct quarterly assessments to track advancements in gender equality initiatives, which can be completed in about four hours.

Getting started

Insight Series

The Insight Series features ground-breaking research, case studies and perspective articles exploring different facets of the Sweef Capital Gender ROI™ impact framework.

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Testimonials

The Sweef Capital Gender ROI™ Practitioner’s Manual is a collective effort, enriched by the practical insights of peer reviewers who recognise the long-lasting value of a gender-positive approach.