Could financial markets help end gender inequality?

May 4, 2016

A woman carries her child on the roof of the Opera House in Oslo, Norway June 20, 2012. In Oslo, the economy has been untouched by the recession and it is a vibrant city with people still spending on everything from housing to consumer goods. Like Dublin ten years ago, there are major building projects underway with luxury apartments being constructed on the waterfront. Ireland now, by contrast, is in a much worse place. The country suffered one of the deepest recessions in Europe after years of reckless decisions made by the country's banks and policymakers brought about a financial crisis that eventually led to Dublin seeking an 85 billion euro ($104 billion) EU/IMF bailout in November 2010. Picture taken June 20, 2012.

A new Gender Equality Index hopes to help investors identify companies encouraging opportunity for women Image: REUTERS/Cathal McNaughton

Keith Breene

Senior Writer, Forum Agenda

A new market index has been launched which hopes to promote gender equality by showing which companies are doing well when it comes to opportunities for women.

The Bloomberg Financial Services Gender-Equality Index (BFGEI) includes 26 public companies that are best-in-class in the financial industry when it comes to gender equality.

Why do we need a gender equality index?

The index measures various indicators such as gender statistics, employee policies, and support and engagement policies.

Bloomberg says the index was created to satisfy demand from investors, a growing number of whom are looking to gender equality data to inform investment decisions.

Numerous studies have shown that diversity is good for the bottom line, including one 2015 report which found that women CEOs in the Fortune 1000 drive three times the returns of S&P 500 enterprises predominantly run by men.

But solid information on companies’ diversity and women-friendly policies has often been hard to come by. The new index aims to fill that gap, providing investors with an easy way to compare the performance of these companies with that of the market as a whole.

Image: Bloomberg

To qualify for the index, a company had to have a market capitalization of at least $15 billion and trade on a United States exchange.

Who is in the index?

The index includes banking heavyweights such as JP Morgan Chase, Bank of America and Barclays, as well as major credit card companies like Visa and MasterCard.

Although there are currently only 26 companies in the index, it will be expanded as more are assessed.

How serious is the inequality problem?

The World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Report 2015 found that since 2006, an extra quarter of a billion women have entered the labour force. While that's good news, it also found that the annual pay for women only now equals the amount men were earning a decade ago.

The gender gap in average earnings between men and women.

The latest Global Gender Gap Report ranked the United States 28th out of 145 countries in terms of gender equality.

Have you read?

Emma Watson in Davos: Gender equality would be the 'single biggest stimulus to the economy'
Which European countries have the biggest gender pay gaps?

Don't miss any update on this topic

Create a free account and access your personalized content collection with our latest publications and analyses.

License and Republishing

World Economic Forum articles may be republished in accordance with the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International Public License, and in accordance with our Terms of Use.

The views expressed in this article are those of the author alone and not the World Economic Forum.