In celebration of the conclusion of International Women’s Month, ANDE highlights our commitment to advancing gender equality in entrepreneurship through ARISE. This representing a significant step forward in our mission, and we look forward to sharing its latest initiatives and accomplishments with you.

ARISE – Advancing Research and Investment Standards for Gender Equity

The initiative is a partnership between ANDE, 2X Global, and the Criterion Institute and is kindly supported by Global Affairs Canada, aiming to accelerate the adoption of gender analysis and expertise within investments and ultimately improve gender equality outcomes for women, girls, and nonbinary individuals in emerging markets, with a particular emphasis on Sub-Saharan Africa, Latin America, and Asia Pacific regions. 

The ARISE consortium does this by investing in the capacity of organizations who can translate between gender and finance, and who are committed to building the field of gender lens investing in a way that advances gender equality and increasing the wider field’s capacity for research with a deeper grounding in gender analysis.

In mid-July 2023, the consortium sought proposals from non-profit organizations for grants of 20,000 – 50,000 USD to support 8 – 10 research projects for a period of 6 – 9 months that contribute to research that is transparent, participatory, responsive to power dynamics, and driven by expertise on gender equality and local context.

Gender and Development for Cambodia has been awarded to investigate the various challenges women entrepreneurs face when trying to access finance in the Asia-Pacific region. In particular, it focuses on the challenges related to intersectional identities that affect their ability to access financial products, services, and investment. The study looks at various intersectional identities, such as age, ability status, religion, family composition, sexual orientation, and gender, to better understand how these factors contribute to creating unique barriers for women entrepreneurs.

Following that, in late November 2023, ANDE ESEA organized a TRANSLATION workshop – translating between gender and finance. The workshop welcomed 22 participants from 4 countries and allowed the participant to delve into the TOOLKIT to understand the logic of finance and investments to be able to design strategies to use finance as a tool to create social change, using five strategies; 1) Invest in opportunities, 2) Assign value in a market, 3) Facilitate movement of capital, 4) Manage the business of investing, and 5) Diversify a portfolio. TOOLKIT, developed by Criterion Institute, is available for social change actors to use as you tackle sticky problems in a safe space. 

Reflections from our participants 

In our participant interview series, we reflected on the success of our TRANSLATION Workshop, which focused on translating between Gender and Finance and was held on November 21st, 2023. We delved into the motivations behind our participants’ involvement in this transformative event, seeking to understand their diverse perspectives and further exploring the intersection between gender and finance.

 Diana Tjeong, Asia Regional Manager, Good Return

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Supapim Wannopas, Regional Programme Coordinator, UN Women

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Jirada Phetlam, Co-Founder and Program Manager, Femnimitr

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Queentries Regar, Senior Consultant (Gender and Private Sector Financing Specialist), Alinea International (Asia-Pacific) 

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Paing, SME Hub Asia

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Ranessa Theyakaraja, Partnerships Officer, Women’s Aid Organization

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 Nalitra Thaiprasert, Senior Program Officer – Economist, The Asia Foundation

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Stay tuned for our upcoming events! If you are interested in our gender work, you can learn more here. Please feel free to contact Pasiwat at pasiwat.sutthirak@aspeninstitute.org with any questions you may have.