International efforts to achieve gender equality should be bolstered by contributions from private investors, recommends a new white paper that UBS AG’s wealth-management division released on Monday.
The white paper examines how wealthy individuals can contribute to the United Nations’ (UN) efforts to empower females and achieve gender equality by 2030, which suggests that these efforts could “benefit significantly from greater input from private individuals.”
The report states that “as governmental and NGO resources are stretched ever more thinly, corporate and individual wealth offers new pathways to supporting gender parity, reducing gender-based violence and discrimination, and unlocking the full potential of roughly half of the world’s population.”
The UN’s initiative has only received 2.6% of donations toward its sustainability-related causes, according to the report. “Within private wealth, one driver may be that only 2% of wealth managers treat and serve women as a distinct group with specific interests,” the report says, citing analysis by UBS Unique and BCG.
“UBS’s wealthiest clients are well placed to address long-term challenges such as [gender equality],” says Simon Smiles, chief investment officer (CIO) for ultra high net worth at UBS Wealth Management, in a statement. “They can engage in gender-lens impact investment and/or philanthropy, as well as using their considerable influence to advance [gender equality-related] causes via policy, business, and education initiatives.”
The report emphasizes three key areas, which, it says, have “almost universal relevance for women’s professional and personal lives.” These include: improving maternity provisions; relieving the burden of unpaid domestic work; and increasing participation in science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) education.
As an example, the report suggests that private individuals can campaign for issues such as maternity leave, affordable child care and female STEM studies as well as advocate for standards in these areas within their own businesses and/or support them through charitable giving.
From an investment perspective, the report suggests that investors “can tilt their listed equities portfolios toward companies that have a greater proportion of senior female managers”; and, engage in impact investing that aims to support affordable childcare and STEM education.
UBS Wealth Management will leverage its existing initiatives to mobilize gender-lens wealth; in addition, the firm announced plans to partner with UN Women to create a Gender-Lens Investing Institute.
“Some of the most significant obstacles to female equality and empowerment are regulatory or policy-driven,” says Mark Haefele, global CIO at UBS Wealth Management and UBS Wealth Management Americas. “As part of our gender-lens wealth approach, we encourage investors and philanthropists to partner with policymakers and other stakeholders when tackling [gender equality efforts].”
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