Quality jobs for women
Supporting more inclusive labour markets is a core part of our impact, and we monitor female representation across the direct jobs supported in our portfolio. Women represented 27 per cent of jobs this year, shaped by the underlying sector and regional composition of our investments.
Sustainable development depends not only on the number of jobs, but on the quality of work available. We work with portfolio companies to improve employment outcomes for women – including pay, progression, safety and voice – so that growth translates into better, more reliable livelihoods.
Alongside our investments, we support businesses to strengthen inclusive workplace practices through targeted value‑creation programmes and shared learning across our portfolio. This helps build approaches that are sustainable and can be replicated across markets.
Examples include our investment in ReNew, a solar manufacturing business in India, where we’re working with the company to increase the proportion of quality female jobs. We’ve also worked with BetterPlace, a blue-collar workforce management platform in India. Using technical assistance funding from BII, the company has developed a digital portal to help train the companies it works with on workplace equity, unconscious bias and inclusive leadership.
Women in the climate transition
Gender equality is an important part of the transition to a low‑carbon economy. New green industries provide opportunities for women to participate in this transition.
In 2025, we continued to integrate gender considerations into climate‑related investments, including e‑mobility and renewable energy. This included investments such as ARC Ride, an e-mobility company in Kenya with over 40 per cent women in its workforce as a result of proactive efforts to support female talent, including in technical engineering roles. We also backed Acumen’s H2R Amplify, which reflects our commitment to expanding economic opportunities for women as both customers and employees in the off-grid solar sector.
Inclusive capital allocation and shared learning
Who receives capital – and who makes investment decisions – shapes how markets develop. We support fund managers that are intentionally investing with a gender and inclusive finance lens, including Aruwa Capital Management, a female-founded and -led fund manager in Nigeria dedicated to the rapidly growing female economy, and businesses with female founders or gender-diverse teams. We also work with partners to design investment strategies that allocate capital more inclusively. This includes our partnership with 3one4 to co-create IIDEA, a fund dedicated to investing in Indian early-stage tech and tech-enabled businesses with a focus on female entrepreneurs who have been financially underserved historically.
Alongside investing, we share what we learn to help strengthen practice across the wider market. In 2025, this included continued engagement around our gender bonds work with partners such as FSD Africa and UN Women, as well as our long-standing partnership with 2X Global to help build the field for investing with a gender lens.
Together with 2X Global, and fellow DFIs Proparco and FinDev Canada, we commissioned the first cross-DFI synthesis report examining whether and how investing with a gender lens can deliver meaningful outcomes for women. Following our own evaluation published in 2024, Proparco and FinDev Canada undertook complementary portfolio evaluations, helping to pool insights across institutions. The synthesis report was published in 2025.
Progress against our targets
Inclusive investing remains an important part of how we deliver impact. Under our 2022–26 Strategy, we exceeded our ambition for 25 per cent of commitments to qualify as gender finance, as defined by the 2X Challenge Framework. In 2025, £585 million (33 per cent) of our commitments qualified as gender finance, and across the strategy period the average was 34 per cent.
Building on this track record, our 2026–31 Strategy raises our level of ambition. Over the period, 30 per cent of new core investments are expected to qualify under the 2X Challenge. At a time when support for gender and inclusion is slowing in parts of the world, at BII we’re proud to step up our commitment to advancing gender equality across our investments. We continue to champion the women driving impact in our portfolio and within our organisation. We’re proud to back partners who create opportunities for women as leaders, entrepreneurs and changemakers.
