A Commitment to Address Gender-Based Violence

Summary

Like climate change, gender-based violence presents a risk to any company, industry or geographic market. And we can influence how that risk is assessed, the data investors see as valuable, and how finance professionals respond in their analyses, in the way they structure deals, and in the terms they attach to their investments. Criterion Institute is making a long-term commitment to addressing gender-based violence, directing one third of resources over the next five years toward re-imagining possibilities for using finance as a tool to effect change on this critical issue.

Goal

  • Aggregate $1T in intent from asset owners to invest in strategies that address gender-based violence

  • Move $10B in capital to investments that address gender-based violence

  • Engage 1k individuals to use their power to influence finance on this issue

Lead Organisation

Criterion Institute

Key Partners

UNICEF, Ms. Foundation, DFAT

Impact Regions

Global

Start Date

2018

End Date

2028

“With our gender based violence commitment Criterion is leaning into a thing that we’ve honestly resisted doing: measuring capital moved. We think it’s the right thing to do within our gender-based violence work. But too often that’s the measure even though it doesn’t actually address whether or not power has shifted. And that in the end for us is the goal. This isn’t actually about how much money moved, this is about how we have transformed systems of power.”
— Joy Anderson, Criterion Institute

Milestones and Progress:

November 2018 (Global GenderSmart Investing Summit)

  • GenderSmart Investing Summit 2018: $7B in commitments from Summit delegates towards $1T of intent

June 2019 (Women Deliver)

  • Criterion Institute is more than halfway to its goal of aggregating $1T in intent from asset owners to invest in strategies that address gender-based violence

  • UNICEF announced its backing of Criterion’s campaign to leverage the power of finance to reduce gender-based violence and its support in engaging 1,000 gender-based violence experts in the design of new solutions

February 2020

  • Haven't started formally tracking the individuals but will soon (estimate around 150). 

  • Named a goal of $10B money actually moved

  • Also have 75 ideas for how to use finance as a tool to address gender-based violence - "our primary focus right now is on ways to specific demonstrations of those ideas

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