The Global Gender Data Disconnect
Across the impact investment ecosystem, data plays an increasingly important role in demonstrating both financial performance and social impact. This is particularly relevant to gender-lens investing, where quality gender data can help SMEs better understand their businesses while enabling funders to identify opportunities, evaluate performance and allocate capital more effectively.
However, across East Africa, inconsistent reporting, limited internal capacity and gaps in comparable gender data continue to make it difficult to establish benchmarks and measure progress. Addressing these challenges can help move gender-lens investing beyond a compliance exercise and towards a more evidence-based approach to value creation.
Why gender data matters
The report highlights how stronger gender data can help connect business performance, investment decisions and measurable gender outcomes.
For SMEs, quality data can help identify opportunities within their workforce, customer base, suppliers and operations. For funders, it provides greater visibility into the financial and social outcomes of their investments and can support more informed capital allocation.
The publication also points to evidence that gender-diverse funds have demonstrated a 20% higher internal rate of return, while women-founded startups have generated USD 0.78 in revenue per dollar raised compared with USD 0.31 for men-founded startups. It additionally notes that the global gender-lens investing market grew from USD 6 billion in 2021 to USD 7.9 billion in 2023.
