The founders continually rejected the “women’s fund” label, emphasizing instead that their fund was for everyone—men and women alike. They sought to challenge the narrow perceptions that might undermine their broader mission. For the first few years, this framing was intentional, rooted in a desire to avoid being pigeonholed in an industry not yet ready to embrace gender as a legitimate lens for investing. Then came a pivotal encounter with Suzanne Biegel, a pioneer for gender-lens investing. Gender lens investing, defined as the integration of gender analysis into new or existing investment practices to achieve better social and financial outcomes, emphasizes that financial systems engage with and benefit men and women differently, often to the disadvantage of women. 42 Biegel, who published annual lists of gender-lens funds worldwide, approached the Hataraku Fund about including them. Once again, Huang and Takatsuka rejected the idea. Biegel, however, challenged their hesitation. Takatsuka recalls her saying, “If someone says you’re a gender-lens fund, you shouldn’t care about the bias that may create. Gender should be one of the hundred lenses a fund has. Japan lens, global lens, minority lens—gender is just one of the many.” 43 This reframing was transformative. By redefining how they viewed “gender-focused” work—not as niche or exclusive, but as part of a broader mission for equity and impact— the fund began to embrace what they already represented. “So today, yes. We are a gender lens fund. Gender lens is one of the lenses, maybe one of the main, that we incorporate in our theory of change and strategy. We are proud of it,” said Takatsuka, one of the fund’s co-leaders. 44 Despite this, the Fund stands to be more explicit in its gender impact. The Fund’s Theory of Change doesn’t mention gender directly but does name SDG 5 (Gender Equity) as one of its impact themes. The Fund has three female investment committee members. The Fund seems to assume that women will inherently benefit from “diverse ways of working and living” rather than explicitly naming, tracking, and reporting gender-based metrics. According to Fund managers Huang and Takatsuka, the Hataraku Fund pays implicit attention to gender dynamics within its investee companies. 45 As noted by Fumi Sugeno, Investment Committee member, the Fund assesses the number of women across organizational levels and looks at internal policies and practices for promoting
129
Ten Years in the Making
Powered by FlippingBook