About the Toolkit

 JEDI stands for Justice, Equity, Diversity and Inclusion. This toolkit has been designed to encourage allocators, investment influencers and intermediaries across the spectrum to understand the dimensions of JEDI investing, and start applying gender and JEDI lenses throughout their investment processes and strategies. It is the output of GenderSmart JEDI Working Group sessions and a series of focused sub-group sessions, stakeholder consultations, research and analysis. 

Our hope is to help investors, investment influencers, and intermediaries to:

  • improve investment decision-making

  • bring on board new portfolio or fund managers

  • improve existing portfolios

  • enact organisational change for both people and processes

A first entry point to JEDI investing, as defined by the Working Group and Advisors (see below) is incorporating a gender lens alongside racial and ethnic justice, or its culturally relevant equivalent. This can mean different things depending on the country or region. In Australia, for example, it refers to indigenous Aboriginals; in Africa it could be a marginalised ethnic group; in Europe it could be refugees. This broad range of definitions, alongside the breadth of potential toolkit users, is why we have not been overly prescriptive or specific with recommended actions. Instead, we have created a set of principles that can be adapted accordingly.

We also want to acknowledge that racial/ethnic diversity is just one form of diversity, lived experience and identity. Other segmentation to follow in due course.

See also:

“This broad range of definitions, alongside the breadth of potential toolkit users, is why we have not been overly prescriptive or specific with recommended actions.”

The GenderSmart JEDI Working Group

GenderSmart, a field-building initiative dedicated to unlocking gender-smart capital at scale, launched a JEDI working group in June 2020 following the murder of George Floyd to address investment’s role in dismantling systemic racism and other forms of inequity beyond gender. Its objective is to enable investment allocators around the world to better understand how to integrate a gender and JEDI lens in both internal processes and teams, and within portfolios. The group aims to reduce implicit bias, with a wide focus on board representation and internal recruitment, advancement, and promotion. It also seeks to improve the diversity of investors and the companies within their portfolios.