One of the biggest barriers to shifting investment strategy is effective stakeholder engagement. In this workshop focused on narrative strategy, peer groups of actors from family offices to DFIs will exchange ideas, feedback and what’s worked (or hasn’t worked) for them as they construct a set of contextually-relevant, persuasive narratives for investing with a gender lens.

Consensus abounds that there has been immense traction in terms of data and research to make equitable gender-smart investment decisions. However, it is also acknowledged that progress has tended to come from a narrow set of perspectives. Whether research is focused on Global North expertise and firms, and lacking local geographic nuance, or carried out by those with financial but not gender expertise, the investment process is lacking valuable analysis and insights. What might it mean to fully integrate the voices of communities, gender experts, civil society organisations and public sector actors for gender equality outcomes? What’s needed is a leap forward in gender analysis, to refine what good and better looks like.

This working session will explore the trends and drivers influencing gender, climate and the global investment context over the next 20 years. This session builds off the ongoing foresight work from the climate and gender investment working group.

Based on a series of potential future scenarios, delegates will explore what implications and investable opportunities might emerge within these futures, how their current investment strategies would fair in these different realities, and what we can individually and collectively do today prepare for these possible outcomes.

This 45-minute plenary discussion will zone in on the spectrum of collective action and systems-level approaches needed to optimise gender-smart capital deployment. Plenary moderator Laurie Spengler, CEO, Courageous Capital Advisors, will lead three panelists representing the voices of institutional capital and leadership in discussion, to untangle challenges and unearth tangible next steps.