Gender-based violence affects more than 1 in 3 women worldwide and has deep and lasting impacts across our families, communities, and the economy. From #MeToo and #TimesUp to the March4Justice, this moment has highlighted like never before the need for action and responsibility across all political, legal, and economic structures to deliver justice and safety. That includes our financial systems. Against this backdrop, Criterion has made a long-term commitment to demonstrating that finance can be used to address gender-based violence.
The Goal: Social change organizations, governments, and investors design and implement strategies that effectively use finance to reduce gender-based violence.
This focus on a single issue area, albeit one with complex intersections with other issues, enables us to go deep in a content area and model new interventions.
The depth enhances the impact potential, while uncovering a broad set of insights that capture the imagination of the whole movement. Decades of field building has taught us that we create systems change more effectively not by focusing on a small set of wins, but by opening a wide range of possibilities that invite people to imagine what they can create.
The structure is straightforward:
1) Engage asset holders in an advocacy campaign to challenge their investment managers to align their portfolios with an intention to prevent gender-based violence; and
2) partner with gender-based violence organizations to determine where systems of finance have the greatest potential to play a role in preventing and responding to gender-based violence.
We see a future where the power of the financial system, as standard practice, complements and support other strategies to prevent, reduce, and ultimately end gender-based violence.
Investors’ goals are reflected in a portfolio that is composed of a diversified set of asset classes. In order to build their portfolio, asset holders invest in financial products.
Finance has its own business model. A set of processes define how finance works and those processes have costs. Those processes are paid for by a set of revenue sources based on the functional role(s) played.
Intermediaries are institutions with a particular legal form that use instruments or vehicles to move capital. The instrument is defined by the terms written out in documents.
Our work depends on an ever-expanding community of team members, advisors, donors, and other partners who help us demonstrate our theory of change and ultimately achieve our mission. Learn more about how you can become more engaged in our work.
Invitations to Engage