‘Gender equality and women’s empowerment’ is one of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), which aim to work towards peace and prosperity for people and the planet by 2030. With less than six years to go to 2030, we take stock of how gender equality is progressing, what needs to be prioritized and how investors can help.
A status update on gender equality
Unfortunately, at the current pace of change, the world is not on track to achieve gender equality by 2030. It is estimated that it will take:
140 years for women to be represented equally in leadership positions including in the workplace
95 years to reach gender parity in the U.S. and Canada alone1
Gender equality is imperative for long-term prosperity
Figure 1: World Economic Forum, Global Gender Gap Index, 2023
What can investors do?
While the SDGs were not created with an investment perspective in mind, investors can use the SDGs as a framework to help guide efforts.
BMO GAM’s efforts
In order to more broadly align our stewardship work with global sustainability and development goals, we track our engagements with portfolio companies relative to the SDGs and report out annually on our efforts. The SDGs that we believe particularly contribute to gender equality are:
- SDG 5: Gender Equality
- SDG 8: Decent Work
- SDG 10: Reducing Inequalities
We identified key performance indicators (KPIs) under each SDG where investors can reasonably contribute through engaging portfolio companies. Over the past three years we have made the following efforts related to SDG 5, 8 and 10.
Figure 2: Engagement Efforts per SDG | SDG 5 Gender Equality | SDG 8 Decent Work | SDG 10 Reducing Inequalities |
|---|---|---|---|
2021 | 133 engagements 13% of total instances | 103 engagements 10% of total instances | 30 engagements 3% of total instances |
2022 | 90 engagements 6% of total instances | 180 engagements 12% of total instances | 75 engagements 5% of total instances |
2023 | 321 engagements 12% of total instances | 380 engagements 14% of total instances | 104 engagements 4% of total instances |
These numbers capture all engagement efforts BMO GAM has made in-house, mainly in North America, as well as global engagements conducted on our behalf by external third-party engagement provider reo©. Our attention has shifted back and forth between these SDGs over the past three years; however, we have steadily increased the portion of our efforts on gender equality, decent work and reducing inequalities, relative to our total efforts. Specifically decent work, which captures topics such as pay equity, human capital management, workforce reporting and fair wages and benefits, has grown in importance from 10% to 14%.
Advocating for public policy change and partnering with others
In addition to engaging with portfolio companies, BMO GAM engages with policymakers and standard- setters in order to raise the bar across sectors, markets or globally. Recently, we engaged the Canadian Securities Administrators to share our investor perspective that transparent and comparable company reporting on board and executive diversity should be made mandatory. We are also part of investor collaborations specifically focused on advancing gender diversity, such as the 30% Club Canada, which advocates for a minimum of 30% women on corporate boards and executive offices. The 30% Club investor group recently amended its statement and mandate to recognize the intersection between gender and other types of diversity, such as racial diversity or Indigeneity.
It will take many groups and strategies to bridge the 30% gender equality gap by 2030. BMO GAM aims to continue to evolve and increase our efforts to further gender equality through engagement with portfolio companies, regulators and policymakers, and our broader industry.
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- BMO GAM’s thematic fund offerings including the BMO Women in Leadership Fund (available as a mutual fund and an ETF series).
- As per our Corporate Governance Guidelines5, all mutual funds and ETFs managed by BMO GAM where we vote equity shares set a minimum expectation of 30% women directors on the boards of North American companies that we invest in. This means that we often vote against the chair of the board’s nominating committee when diversity levels do not meet our expectation. 6
- All mutual funds and ETFs managed by BMO GAM are covered by a stewardship program that engages with underlying portfolio companies to address sustainability risks and opportunities. This includes encouraging progress on gender equality and diversity, equity and inclusion and decent work.
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Footnotes
1 WEF_GGGR_2023.pdf (weforum.org)↩
2 Goal 5 | Department of Economic and Social Affairs (un.org)↩
3 Gender equality progress under threat at mid-point of SDGs | World Economic Forum (weforum.org)↩
4 The economic benefits of gender parity | McKinsey↩
5 Find BMO GAM’s Corporate Governance Guidelines here: Responsible Investing Policies & Approaches | BMO Global Asset Management (bmogam.com)↩
6 How we voted: recapping the 2023 proxy season | BMO Global Asset Management (bmogam.com)↩
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