Document Type
Thesis
First Faculty Advisor
Asli Ascioglu
Second Faculty Advisor
Leila Zbib
Keywords
gender lens; ESG; investing; performance; gender diversity
Publisher
Bryant University
Rights Management
CC - BY - NC - ND
Abstract
This study aims to analyze the performance of environmental, social, and governance mutual funds and ETFs, particularly those composed of companies that prioritize the gender diversity pillar of ESG. This method of investing, known as gender lens investing, involves selecting securities with a high social ESG score attributable to strong gender diversity throughout all levels of the company, or in this case, companies that an ETF or mutual fund is invested in. I expect to find that gender diverse ETFs and mutual funds perform better than their benchmarks, promoting the inclusion of policies that facilitate this aspect of ESG in companies. The purpose of this thesis is to understand ESG policies and.gender lens investing. It studies if companies can increase their shareholder value and investors can increase their return through investing in these types of securities. This thesis uses one primary research method, which includes examining the holding period return, average annual return, standard deviation, sharpe ratio, treynor ratio, and alpha of the returns of these gender diverse ETFs and mutual funds in comparison to their benchmarks. This allows the relationship between the gender diversity ETFs and their performance to be analyzed. The data and conclusions gathered from this study add to the body of knowledge on ESG and gender lens investing.
Comments
This work was created as a research undertaking to analyze the performance of gender lens mutual funds and ETFs in the United States since their inception. It has never been previously published and was written with the goal of advancing this field of study.