Bringing the conversation on climate and gender to the forefront

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Subject: Bringing the conversation on climate and gender to the forefront

2X Global: Unlocking gender-smart capital at scale

Dear Friend,

This newsletter drops into your inbox this month in the midst of London Climate Action Week, one of the world’s largest independent climate events.

This is where the 2X Global team has been this week, working to bring considerations about integrating gender into climate action and particularly climate finance, from the margins to the center of the conversation.

Led by our CEO Jessica Espinoza, we have been participating in, learning from and leading discussions around climate finance and gender.

What has been especially encouraging is seeing how the conversation has evolved. Increasingly, the focus is no longer simply on making the case for why gender matters in climate action, but on the practicalities: what tangible steps are needed to ensure climate finance systems are truly gender responsive, and how institutions can move from intention to implementation in ways that drive measurable impact and accountability.

This shift was front and center during our workshop co-hosted with The Private Infrastructure Development Group, Investing at the Gender-Climate Nexus, where investors and practitioners explored how to embed gender and climate considerations more effectively across the investment lifecycle. As our Senior Associate Eleanor Ripoll reflected afterwards, one of the clearest takeaways was simple but critical: if gender and climate considerations are not intentionally woven into investment processes from the very beginning, they risk being sidelined later on.

We also had the opportunity to partner with British International Investment for a timely discussion on the Belém Gender Action Plan and what lies ahead for climate finance as the sector looks toward COP31. Reflecting on the conversation, Jessica noted an important inflection point: the climate community has moved beyond awareness-building toward a much sharper focus on implementation and accountability for gender-responsive climate action, particularly following the adoption of the Belém Gender Action Plan at COP30. The pressing question now is how climate finance institutions will respond to this growing demand for accountability and translate commitments into meaningful action.

Answering this question is central to our reason for being in London this week. As conversations continue here in London and momentum builds towards COP 31, it is clear that ensuring climate finance works for women can no longer be a peripheral conversation.

Keep reading for a selection of the latest GLI news and insights.

In Community,

2X Global Team

News from the field

Mainstreaming gender lens investing. The 2X Challenge continues to grow with over 30 public and private investors now having committed to the 2024-2027 Challenge. The latest is the The Private Infrastructure Development Group (PIDG) which made the announcement during London Climate Action Week. Philanthropist Melinda French Gates has pledged an additional $215 million to women's health initiatives worldwide, vowing to help more women get “the right care at the right time.” The new funding focuses on expanding maternal care, contraceptive access, and heavily targets vastly underfunded midlife issues like menopause. Writing in ImpactAlpha, Toniic's Dipti Pratt reflects on a panel at Pro Mujer's GLI Forum in Lima — joined by 2X Global CEO Jessica Espinoza — exploring what it takes to move beyond isolated impact investments and build the integrated ecosystems a true impact economy requires. The EBRD has launched its new Gender Equality and Human Capital Strategy for 2026–30, targeting four impact areas: skills, inclusive finance, infrastructure and human capital in conflict settings, as the Bank expands into sub-Saharan Africa and Iraq. The Dominican Republic has become the first country in Latin America and the Caribbean to integrate gender-disaggregated MSME financing data into its banking regulatory framework, as part of the global WE Finance Code, with 26 institutions representing 97% of the country's financial system already on board. Good news and bad news coming out of Parallelle Finance's 'Gender Lens Investing 2026' review which reports that AUM in gender lens equity funds reached $4.9 billion and gender equality bonds hit $60.6 billion in 2026, while noting that structural barriers to women's workplace advancement have steepened and the gender pay gap has widened in several markets. British International Investment has signed a €30 million facility with NSIA Banque Côte d'Ivoire to expand MSME lending, with at least 30% of the financing earmarked for women-led businesses under the 2X Challenge criteria.

Gender and Climate Investing. 2X Global CEO Jessica Espinoza joined the Engaging ESG podcast to explore why women receive less than 1% of US finance despite generating twice the revenue per dollar invested, and how tools like the Gender Smart Climate Finance Toolkit are helping to close that gap. As the International Year of the Women Farmer begins, Landesa argues that the nearly half of the global agricultural workforce made up of women remains largely invisible, excluded from land titles, credit, subsidies and farmer census data by inequalities that take root early in life and compound across generations. GWL Voices launched its Spotlight report on women in climate and environmental leadership at London Climate Action Week, presenting over 30 years of data on women's participation across seven key multilateral institutions, and making the case that gender-equal governance is a precondition, not a complement, to effective climate action.

Leadership, Culture and Policy, JEDI. Acumen's Dan Waldron argues that impact investing has an "everything bagel" problem - layering so many compliance and reporting expectations onto early-stage social enterprises that it becomes impossible to run a real business. He proposes right-sizing those demands to what each company can meaningfully carry. Fortune's 2026 Most Powerful Women ranking features leaders across 94 companies and 20 countries, with Citigroup's Jane Fraser, the first woman to lead a major Wall Street bank, taking the top spot for the first time. Why did two major American universities recently decide against memorialising one of their major philanthropists? In an op-ed in the LA Times, the late Nicole Wertheim’s daughter asserts that her mother’s long legacy of philanthropy was diminished when both institutions chose to first consult Wertheim’s ex-husband, with whom she’d founded the Wertheim Family Foundation and whom she’d divorced after 55 years of marriage. In a new post on Medium, 2X Global CEO Jessica Espinoza explores why the rise of sovereign AI funds is a pivotal moment for gender-lens investing, arguing that who leads these vehicles and whether a gender lens is embedded will shape national technology capability for years to come.

Data and Tools. Equity Clear has launched Show Us the Data, proposing Australia's first common standard for pipeline diversity reporting, built through consultation with over 160 organisations and designed to reveal where diverse founders are lost in the funding process. A new BCG report warns that Africa's path to economic gender parity has extended to an estimated 170 years, yet highlights digital entrepreneurship as a promising avenue, with 66% of women surveyed aspiring to run their own businesses, even as women-led startups received less than 1% of the continent's venture capital in 2024. The 2026 CWDI Report finds that companies led by women CEOs, still just 6.7% of blue-chip firms globally, have 38.3% women on their boards and nearly double the global average of women in senior management, pointing to a measurable "multiplier effect" when women reach the top.

Care Economy. South Africa's deepening cost-of-living crisis is falling disproportionately on women and children, with new data showing that the child support grant now covers just 60% of a basic nutritious diet, while women continue to absorb household economic shocks by reducing their own food intake and taking on debt. UNICEF's Innovative Finance Hub reports growing momentum for Child-Lens Investing three years after its launch, with new adoption in Japan, alignment with DFI priorities at the EDFI Spring Meeting, and a partnership with GIIN to develop child-lens metrics within IRIS+.

Resilience (GBVH, Financial Inclusion, Health, Security).

A clinical trial across Nigeria, Kenya, Tanzania and South Africa has found that a low-cost plastic drape, manufacturable for less than a dollar, can detect postpartum haemorrhage early enough to reduce severe bleeding, death or surgery by 60 per cent, in a condition that kills a woman somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. A new UN report has verified 546 incidents of conflict-related sexual violence in Sudan since the war began, including gang-rape and sexual slavery, calling it unprecedented in scale and a deliberate weapon of war, while the UK and six European governments warn of an imminent RSF assault on el-Obeid that could echo the atrocities in el-Fasher.

Community Calendar

1 July

2X Global and Amazon will be hosting Investing in Resilience: Women’s Climate Leadership in Cape Town. This event will spotlight and celebrate the pivotal role of women’s leadership in climate action. RSVP here to express interest in attending.

21 July

2X Global is offering two free 2X Criteria training sessions next month, designed to show how to apply the 2X Criteria across companies, funds, and financial institutions operating in diverse sectors, contexts, and geographies. Register here.

23 July

2X Global will be hosting our first event in Mauritius in partnership with the Trade and Development Bank and Rogers Capital. Tailored for women investors and investment managers, the woman-only convening will create a forum where participants can network and openly discuss opportunities in the gender-smart investing landscape. RSVP here.

Thank you to our partners and supporters

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Subject: Bringing the conversation on climate and gender to the forefront