Learn

Investors should increase their understanding of the social, economic, and material costs of ignoring women’s health questions. The report recommends investors to understand that women’s health, including reproductive health, encourages human capital offering business benefits in the workplace and supply chain regarding absenteeism, turnover, productivity, reduced risk exposure, cost reduction, and profitability. At the level of an economy, it impacts sustained economic growth; GDP; labour force participation, and women’s (economic) outcomes. Further, the report advises investors to work with their colleagues, peers, and stakeholders to grow their collective understanding, and therefore agency, on women’s health issues and reproductive health. Investors can involve peers and ESG practitioners, build or showcasing platforms to learn from experts, investors, and representative organisations of relevant populations. Likewise, investors can engage ESG data providers on how and whether they might consider women’s health and reproductive health issues.

Set priorities

Investors should establish organisational priorities, starting with the breadth of intervention. For instance, they can establish whether they want a narrow focus, for example, reproductive health, or rights, or a broader focus on women’s health. Investors can assess where women’s health fits within their existing frameworks, for example, gender, diversity equity and inclusion (DEI), human rights, or health. They may add a gender or health lens to any of those or decide the set of issues need to be elevated as a top priority. Additionally, depending on their portfolios, investors decide to take a global approach or a more regional or country-specific approach. Also, portfolio companies may have health impacts and influence on a range of types of workers and stakeholders, from full-time employees to contractors, hourly workers, franchisees, suppliers, and consumers – stakeholders’ types that investors need to consider influencing.

Act

The report indicates that there are opportunities to integrate women’s health across the full spectrum of investment decisions, processes, activities. The primary focus is on shareholder engagement and advocacy, as investors can reap benefits from aggregating demand for better and more consistent and harmonised data on women’s health. Investors can next act on reviewing their processes and integrate women’s (reproductive) health with other related investment priorities, processes and decision making related to ESG issues. Investors can also ask questions on reproductive health, after which they can work with other investors to create market clout and agree with common goals, leaning into the public policy nexus, and addressing hard issues.

Activate systems

The report suggests that individual firms or investors’ actions towards women’s health are significant and necessary; such efforts, regardless of the range of issues they address, are not sufficient in isolation, and must not shy away from tackling the challenging and complex issues at hand. Thus, the report recommends organising leaders interested in the influence of business and finance on women’s health to together set ambitions. The report further states that such efforts help address policy change, regulators require adequate ESG disclosures on women’s health, inclusive of reproductive health. The report prompts investors to lean into the policy nexus on women’s health by affirming the social and economic benefits of caring for women’s health.