Pax Ellevate Global Women’s Leadership Fund: Investing Like a Feminist in the #MeToo Era

The senior vice-president for sustainable investing at the U.S.-based Pax World Funds, a leader in socially responsible investing, needed to identify and invest in companies for the company's Pax Ellevate Global Women's Leadership Fund, an investment fund that promoted labour rights through gender equality. The fund had more than US$200 million in assets under management, a 25 per cent one-year rate of return, and a three-year annual rate of return of 10 per cent. In June 2018, a newly hired analyst was asked to evaluate a company to determine its suitability as a potential gender-lens investment target for the fund, using specific socially responsible investing criteria. She wondered how she should evaluate the company. What characteristics would make it suitable as an investment target for the fund?

The case is suitable for use near the end of an undergraduate course on international business or global corporate social responsibility. Students are expected to understand the cultural, economic, technological, and political aspects of various national business environments and their effects on international business operations. The case discusses the concept of socially responsible investing funds in general and the criteria of social responsibility by focusing on a company that created the field of socially responsible investing funds in 1971. It introduces some of the criticisms of ethical funds and creates opportunities to discuss gender and pay equity and concerns about sexual harassment in the workplace in the context of the #MeToo movement. After working through the case and assignment questions, students will have developed their ability to do the following:<ul><li>Describe socially responsible investing and religious funds.</li><li>Determine whether diversity improves managerial decision-making.</li><li>Create an action plan companies can use to advance gender diversity globally.</li><li>Explain sexual harassment in the workplace.</li><li>Outline the value of affirmative action in addressing past discrimination.</li><ul>

• fund management, women in management, investment funds, employment equity